


ixtwttti: V*.t*tl<icti :xn|aat^uu^ u:t: 

isii a^^^lis iiLt Mil ti ti _ til MM 1 i n Mtr. niVi ii m V. liiv 












ir5r**U<W.V 


•Cim: 


itiiitltyii&j 


lr^.^.;nHHv 


; r» 5 ^ ^ ^ t ^ ^■r. j'; nt: 


WAV, 


,i^\^uHVivi:4;x5«;ri»u*,tV<iV;uu*U\V^^'^j 
'. V r.^ ^ t It ; w:t a 

t;: :r,r : , ! 1 ‘.wrTfTcT^^i *|r f:nT:ihfS 














r j< • f 






Ansv.v.v:; 


; t5Ct»m:f : f;<:r.(uin<:r.i 


;?,!(S3j*M55'UHti:^d 

•*• *s<i 

: ;;'Uii :;y ;;it 








■ «\ 1 ■«*« w%»\, 


-CIICIJ 


.iijia 11 iiiiliii L 




;r.iMy:t;ux)t;iu;t:i ;tii: 


nci 








ttfiifitkMii 

yituinUn] 


ctzt 


S^*« « «. t « « V • r • 

i*tiii»;ej!rM'. si 


l^^T' 

:l£5i 


a j;i'A 




rf:i?m;:fn’ 




Sf;<«;flr<:i;fM;rii:i:t:i:ia:«:t;t:G: 

ririv'.iitVu’.:iUi«cfttrr;tS;:5U*ii 

W ir ?: f :«nr. : Rj n 


Iwrt' 


r««1 V' > •> .TilM* aaS «Ia7 •‘t- 

;r.t?x;rfitMir' :iti:n«»:nnxsS£ 




Vtfi 














ati^inuttot ;urttuu;'*un» .?5 .^vt: 


ri%52cv.i\i' 

kJffrHrcr.i:* 




»•««• «*«• ^ ^ f 




r.ni 






rfum'.i' 


t:i:tn:i',i.:: ‘m 








n I ‘.11 1 1 nil :t ' 'll 


;tyyu;t 




iRfciaHin’; 


iliTMM'.llJ 


[irtHi*rr.t:r 




•la**'**^***** 4 « 44 

:Ri:i:uci5t'.ni:r 












r;r;Vf^uS«'sU'!Uiiii'(lS;i’^riUiV;ri 


f^f!Ht?c:f:r' iSftiTSSJc 


; H f :?! 5 S IH j: ? : i: 












:(;x:(U'ataO«»» 


r.’t^Viajr 


if I frfir.iiirit i: 










;aiiJ«;x;.';5 w ;; ;i:a)j:;ci;j 













Class "P ^ ^ , 

Book — O 4 iT ‘’i S 
GopighfN” ^ -f-A 


COPYRIGHT DEPOSfD 


\ 


< 


I 







I 




V 


I 


.. s* * 





I 



^“Why . . . didnH I know of that years agof’ he asked” 

[See p. 48] 



The Ethel Morton Books 

ETHEL MORTON’S 
ENTERPRISE 


BY 

MABELL sK^fSMITH 



THE NEW YORK BOOK COMPANY 

NEW YORK 



Copyright, 1915, by 
THE NEW YORK BOOK COMPANY 



MAR 27 1917 


©GU460038 

T-k, I 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER page 

I How It Started 9 

II A Snow Man and Seed Catalogues . . 21 

III Dorothy Tells Her Secret 32 

IV Gardening on Paper 48 

V A Defect in the Title 66 

VI Wild Flowers for Helen’s Garden . . 76 

VII Color Schemes 93 

VI 1 1 Cave Life 109 

IX “Nothing but Leaves” 121 

X The U. S. C. and the Community . . . i33 

XI The Flower Festival 149 

XH Enough to Give Away 169 

XHI In Business 181 

XIV Uncle Dan^s Researches 197 

XV Fur and Fossils 213 

XVI Fairyland 222 

XVII The Missing Heiress 234 


I 


ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 


CHAPTER I 


HOW IT STARTED 

E thel MORTON, called from the color of 
her eyes Ethel “Blue’’ to distinguish her from 
her cousin, also Ethel Morton, whose brown eyes 
gave her the nickname of Ethel “Brown,” was look- 
ing out of the window at the big, damp flakes of snow 
that whirled down as if in a hurry to cover the dull 
January earth with a gay white carpet. 

“The giants are surely having a pillow fight this 
afternoon,” she laughed. 

“In honor of your birthday,” returned her cousin. 
“The snowflakes are really as large as feathers,” 
added Dorothy Smith, another cousin, who had come 
over to spend the afternoon. 

All three cousins had birthdays in January. The 
Mortons always celebrated the birthdays of every 
member of the family, but since there were three in 
the same month they usually had one large party and 
noticed the other days with less ceremony. This 
year Mrs. Emerson, Ethel Brown’s grandmother, 
had invited the whole United Service Club, to which 
the girls belonged, to go to New York on a day’s 
expedition. They had ascended the Woolworth 


10 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 


Tower, gone through the Natural History Museum, 
seen the historic Jumel Mansion, lunched at a large 
hotel and gone to the Hippodrome. Everybody 
called it a perfectly splendid party, and Ethel Blue 
and Dorothy were quite willing to consider it as a 
part of their own birthday observances. 

Next year it would be Dorothy’s turn. This year 
her party had consisted merely in taking her cousins 
on an automobile ride. A similar ride had been 
planned for Ethel Blue’s birthday, but the giants had 
plans of their own and the young people had had to 
give way to them. Dorothy had come over to spend 
the afternoon and dine with her cousins, however. 
She lived just around the corner, so her mother was 
willing to let her go in spite of the gathering drifts, 
because Roger, Ethel Brown’s older brother, would 
be able to take her home such a short distance, even 
if he had to shovel a path all the way. 

The snow was so beautiful that they had not 
wanted to do anything all the afternoon but gaze 
at it. Dicky, Ethel Brown’s little brother, who was 
the “honorary member” of the U. S. C., had come in 
wanting to be amused, and they had opened the win- 
dow for an inch and brought in a few of the huge 
flakes which grew into ferns and starry crystals under 
the magnifying glass that Mrs. Morton always kept 
on the desk. 

“Wouldn’tdt be fun if our eyeth could thee thingth 
like that!” exclaimed Dicky, and the girls agreed 
with him that it would add many marvels to our 
already marvellous world. 

“As long as our eyes can’t see the wee things I’m 


HOW IT STARTED 


II 


glad Aunt Marion taught us to use this glass when 
we were little,” said Ethel Blue who had been 
brought up with her cousins ever since she was a 
baby. 

“Mother says that when she and Uncle Roger 
and Uncle Richard,” said Dorothy, referring to 
Ethel Brown’s and Ethel Blue’s fathers, her uncles — 
“were all young at home together Grandfather Mor- 
ton used to make them examine some new thing every 



day and tell him about it. Sometimes it would be 
the materials a piece of clothing was made of, or the 
paper of a magazine or a flower — anything that came 
along.” 

“When I grow up,” said Ethel Blue, “I’m going to 
have a large microscope like the one they have in the 
biology class in the high school. Helen took me to 
the class with her one day and the teacher let me look 
through it. It was perfectly wonderful. There 
was a slice of the stem of a small plant there and it 
looked just as if it were a house with a lot of rooms. 
Each room was a cell, Helen said.” 

“A very suitable name,” commented Ethel Brown. 



12 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 


“What are you people talking about?” asked 
Helen, who came in at that instant. 

“I was telling the girls about that time when I 



looked through the high school microscope,” 
answered Ethel Blue. 

“You saw among other things, some cells in the 



Multiple Cells 


very lowest form of life. A single cell is all there 
is to the lowest animal or vegetable.” 

“What do you mean by a single cell?” 

“Just a tiny mass of jelly-like stuff that Is called 
protoplasm. The cells grow larger and divide until 


HOW IT STARTED 13 

there are a lot of them. That’s the way plants and 
animals grow.” 

“If each is as small as those I saw under the mi- 
croscope there must be billions in me!” and Ethel 
Blue stretched her arms to their widest extent and 
threw her head upwards as far as her neck would 
allow. 

“I guess there are, young woman,” and Helen went 
off to hang her snowy coat where it would dry before 
she put it in the closet. 

“There’th a thnow flake that lookth like a plant!”* 
cried Dicky who had slipped open the window wide 
enough to capture an especially large feather. 

“It really does!” exclaimed Ethel Blue, who was 
nearest to her little cousin and caught a glimpse of 
the picture through the glass before the snow melted. 

“Did it have ‘root, stem and leaves’?” asked 
Dorothy. “That’s what I always was taught made 
a plant — root, stem and leaves. Would Helen call 
a cell that you couldn’t see a plant?” 

“Yes,” came a faint answer from the hall. “If 
it’s living and isn’t an animal it’s a vegetable — 
though way down in the lower forms it’s next to 
impossible to tell one from the other. There isn’t 
any rule that doesn’t have an exception.” 

“I should think the biggest difference would be that 
animals eat plants and plants eat — ^what do plants 
eat?” ended Dorothy lamely. 

“That is the biggest difference,” assented Helen. 
“Plants are fed by water and mineral substances that 
come from the soil directly, while animals get the 
mineral stuff by way of the plants.” 


(14 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 

“Father told us once about some plants that 
caught insects. They eat animals.” 

“And there are animals that eat both vegetables 
and animals, you and I, for instance. So you can’t 
draw any sharp lines.” 

“When a plant gets out of the cell stage and has 
a ‘root, stem and leaves’ 
then you know it’s a plant 
if you don’t before,” 
insisted Dorothy, deter- 
mined to make her knowl- 
edge useful. 

“Did any of you notice 
the bean I’ve been sprout- 
ing in my room?” asked 
Helen. 

“I’ll get it, ni get it I” 
shouted Dicky. 

“Trust Dicky not to let 
anything escape his no- 
tice I” laughed his big sis- 
ter. 

Dicky returned in a 
minute or two ’ carrying 
very carefully a shallow 
earthenware dish from 
^ , which some thick yellow- 

green tips were sprouting. 
“I soaked some peas and beans last week,” ex- 
plained Helen, “and when they were tender I planted 
them. You see they’re poking up their heads 
now.” 



HOW IT STARTED 


“They don’t look like real leaves,” commented 
Ethel Blue. 

“This first pair is really the two halves of the 
bean. They hold the food for the little plant. 
They’re so fat and pudgy 
that they never do look like 
real leaves. In other plants 
where there isn’t so much 
food they become quite like 
their later brothers.” 

“Isn’t it queer that what- 
ever makes the plant grow 
knows enough to send the 
leaves up and the roots 
down,” said Dorothy 
thoughtfully. 

“That’s the way the life 
principle works,” agreed 
Helen. “This other little 
plant is a pea and I want 
you to see if you notice any 
difference between it and 
the bean.” 

She pulled up the wee 
growth very delicately and 
they all bent over it as it lay 
in her hand. 

“It hathn’t got fat leaveth,” cried Dicky. 

“Good for Dicky,” exclaimed Helen. “He has 
beaten you girls. You see the food in the pea is 
packed so tight that the pea gets discouraged about 
trying to send up those first leaves and gives it up 



1 6 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 


as a bad job. They stay underground and do their 
feeding from there.” 

“A sort of cold storage arrangement,” smiled 
Ethel Brown. 

“After these peas are a little taller you’d find if 
you pulled them up that the supply of food had all 
been used up. There will be nothing down there 
but a husk.” 

“What happens when this bean plant uses up all 
its food?” 

“There’s nothing left but a sort of skin that drops 
off. You can see how it works with the bean be- 
cause that is done above the ground.” 

“Won’t it hurt those plants to pull them up this 
way?” 

“It will set them back, but I planted a good many 
so as to be able to pull them up at different ages and 
see how they looked.” 

“You pulled that out so gently I don’t believe it 
will be hurt much.” 

“Probably it will take a day or two for it to catch 
up with its neighbors. It will have to settle its 
roots again, you see.” 

“What are you doing this planting for?” asked 
Dorothy. 

“For the class at school. We get all the differ- 
ent kinds of seeds we can — the ones that are large 
enough to examine easily with only a magnifying 
glass like this one. Some we cut open and examine 
carefully inside to see how the new leaves are to be 
fed, and then we plant others and watch them grow.” 

“I’d like to know why you never told me about 


HOW IT STARTED 


17 


that before?” demanded Ethel Brown. “Fm going 
to get all the grains and fruits I can right oh and 
plant them. Is all that stuff in a horse chestnut leaf- 
food?” 

“The horse chestnut is a hungry one, isn’t it?” 

“I made some bulbs blossom by putting them in a 
tall glass in a dark place and bringing them into the 
light when they had started to sprout,” said Ethel 
Blue, “but I think this is more fun. I’m going to 
plant some, too.” 

“Grandmother Emerson always has beautiful 
bulbs. She has plenty in her garden that she allows 
to stay there all winter, and they come up and are 
scrumptious very early in the Spring. Then she 
takes some of them into the house and keeps them 
in the dark, and they blossom all through the cold 
weather.” 

“Mother likes bulbs, too,” said Dorothy, “cro- 
cuses and hyacinths and Chinese lilies — ^but I never 
cared much about them. Somehow the bulb itself 
looks too fat. I don’t care much for fat things or 
people.” 

“Don’t think of it as fat; it’s the food supply.” 

“Well, I think they’re greedy things, and I’m not 
going ever to bother with them. I’ll leave them to 
Mother, but I am really going to plant a garden this 
summer. I think it will be loads of fun.” 

“We haven’t much room for a garden here,” said 
Helen, “but we always have some vegetables and a 
few flowers.” 

“Why don’t we have a fine one this summer, 
Helen ?” demanded Ethel Brown. “You’re learning 
65 


1 8 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 


a lot about the way plants grow, I should think you’d 
like to grow them.” 

“I believe I should if you girls would help me. 
There never has been any member of the family who 
was interested, and I wasn’t wild about it myself, 
and I just never got started.” 

“The truth is,” confessed Ethel Brown, “if we 
don’t have a good garden Dorothy here will have 
something that will put ours entirely in the shade.” 

The girls all laughed. They never had known 
Dorothy until the previous summer. When she 
came to live in Rosemont in September they had 
learned that she was extremely energetic and that she 
never abandoned any plan that she attempted. The 
Ethels knew, therefore, that if Dorothy was going 
to have a garden the next summer they’d better 
have a garden, too, or else they would see little of 
her. 

“If we both have gardens Dorothy will condescend 
to come and see ours once in a while and we can 
exchange ideas and experiences,” continued Ethel 
Brown. 

“I’d love to have a garden,” said Ethel Blue. 
“Do you suppose Roger would be willing to dig it 
up for us?” 

“Dig up what?” asked Roger, stamping into the 
house in time to hear his name. 

The girls told him of their new plan. 

“I’ll help all of you if you’ll plant one flower that 
I like ; plant enough of it so that I can pick a lot any 
time I want to. The trouble with the little garden 
we’ve had is that there weren’t enough flowers for 


HOW IT STARTED 


19 


more than the centrepiece in the dining-room. 
Whenever I wanted any I always had to go and give 
a squint at the dining room table and then do some 
calculation as to whether there could be a stalk or 
two left after Helen had cut enough for the next 
day.” 

“And there generally weren’t any!” sympathized 
Helen. 

“What flower is it you’re so crazy over?” asked 
Ethel Blue. 

“Sweetpeas, my child. Never in all my life have 
I had enough sweetpeas.” 

“I’ve had more than enough,” groaned Ethel 
Brown. “One summer I stayed a fortnight with 
Grandmother Emerson and I picked the sweetpeas 
for her every morning. She was very particular 
about having them picked because they blossom bet- 
ter if they’re picked down every day.” 

“It must have taken you an awfully long time; she 
always has rows and rows of them,” said Helen. 

“I worked a whole hour in the sun every single 
day 1 If we have acres of sweetpeas we’ll all have 
to help Roger pick.” 

“I’m willing to,” said Ethel Blue. “I’m like 
Roger, I think they’re darling; just like butterflies or 
something with wings.” 

“We’ll have to cast our professional eyes into the 
garden and decide on the best place for the sweet- 
peas,” said Roger. “They have to be planted 
early, you know. If we plant them just anywhere 
they’ll be sure to be in the way of something that 
grows shorter so it will be hidden.” 


20 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 


“Or grows taller and is a color that fights with 
them.” 

“It would be hard to find a color that wasn’t 
matched by one sweetpea or another. They seem 
to be of every combination under the sun.” 

“It’s queer, some of the combinations would be 
perfectly hideous in a dress but they look all right 
in Nature’s dress.” 

“We’ll send for some seedsmen’s catalogues and 
order a lot.” 

“I suppose you don’t care what else goes into the 
garden?” asked Helen. 

“Ladies, I’ll do all the digging you want, and 
plant any old thing you ask me to, if you’ll just let 
me have my sweetpeas,” repeated Roger. 

“A bargain,” cried all the girls. 

“I’ll write for some seed catalogues this after- 
noon,” said Helen. “It’s so appropriate, when it’s 
snowing like this !” 

“ ‘Take time by the fetlock,’ as one of the girls 
says in ‘Little Women,’ ” laughed Roger. “If you’ll 
cast your orbs out of the window you’ll see that it has 
almost stopped. Come on out and make a snow 
man.” 

Every one jumped at the idea, even Helen who 
laid aside her writing until the evening, and there 
was a great putting on of heavy coats and overshoes 
and mittens. 


CHAPTER II 

A SNOW MAN AND SEED CATALOGUES 

T he snow was of just the right dampness to 
make snowballs, and a snow man, after all, is 
just a succession of snowballs, properly placed. 
Roger started the one to go at the base by rolling up 
a ball beside the house and then letting it roll down 
the bank toward the gate. 

“See it gather moss I” he cried. “It’s just the op- 
posite of a rolling stone, isn’t it?” 

When it stopped it was of goodly size and it was 
standing in the middle of the little front lawn. 

“It couldn’t have chosen a better location,” com- 
mended Helen. 

“We need a statue in the front yard,” said Ethel 
Brown. 

“This will give a truly artistic air to the whole 
place,” agreed Ethel Blue. 

“What’s the next move?” asked Dorothy, who had 
not had much experience in this kind of manufacture. 

“We start over here by the fence and roll another 
one, smaller than this, to serve as the body,” ex- 
plained Roger. “Come on here and help me; this 
snow is so heavy it needs an extra pusher already.” 

Dorothy lent her muscles to the task of pushing 
on the snow man’s “torso,” as Ethel Blue, who knew 
something about drawing figures, called it. The 
21 


22 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 


Ethels, meanwhile, were making the arms out of 
small snowballs placed one against the next and 
slapped hard to make them stick. Helen was roll- 
ing a ball for the head and Dicky had disappeared 
behind the house to hunt for a cane. 

“Helgho!” Roger called after him. “I saw an 
old clay pipe stuck behind a beam In the woodshed 
the other day. See if it’s still there and bring It 
along.” 

Dicky nodded and raised a mittened paw to Indi- 
cate that he understood his Instructions. 

It required the united efforts of Helen and Roger 
to set the gentleman’s head on his shoulders, and 
Helen ran in to the cellar to get some bits of coal 
to make his eyes and mouth. 

“He hasn’t any expression. Let me try to model 
a nose for the poor lamb!” begged Ethel Blue. 
“Stick on this arm, Roger, while I sculpture these 
marble features.” 

By dint of patting and punching and adding a long 
and narrow lump of snow, one side of the head 
looked enough different from the other to warrant 
calling It the face. To make the difference more 
marked Dorothy broke some straws from the cover- 
ing of one of the rosebushes and created hair with 
them. 

“Now nobody could mistake this being his speak- 
ing countenance,” decided Helen, sticking two pieces 
of coal where eyes should be and adding a third for 
the mouth. Dicky had found the pipe and she thrust 
it above his lips. 

“Merely two-llps, not ruby lips,” commented 


A SNOW MAN 23 

Roger. “This is an original fellow; he’s ‘not like 
other girls.’ ” 

“This cane is going to hold up his right arm; I 
don’t feel so certain about the left,” remarked Ethel 
Brown anxiously. 

“Let it fall at his side. That’s some natural, any- 
way. He’s walking, you see, swinging one arm and 
with the other on the top of his cane.” 

“He’ll take cold if he doesn’t have something on 
his head. I’m nervous about him,” and Dorothy 
bent a worried look at their creation. 

“Hullo,” cried a voice from beyond the gate. 
“He’s bully. Just make him a cap out of this ban- 
danna and he’ll look like a Venetian gondolier.” 

James Hancock and his sister, Margaret, the Glen 
Point members of the United Service Club, came 
through the gate, congratulated Ethel Blue on her 
birthday, and paid elaborate compliments to the 
sculptors of the Gondolier. 

“Tha*t red hanky on his massive brow gives the 
touch of color he needed,” said Margaret. 

“We don’t maintain that his features are ‘faultily 
faultless,’ ” quoted Roger, “but we do insist that 
they’re ‘icily regular.’ ” 

“Thanks to the size of the nose Ethel Blue stuck 
on they’re not ‘splendidly null.’ ” 

“No, there’s no ‘nullness’ about that nose,” agreed 
James. “That’s ‘some’ nose!” 

When they were all in the house and preparing 
for dinner Ethel Blue unwrapped the gift that Mar- 
garet had brought for her birthday. It was a shal- 
low bowl of dull green pottery in which was growing 


24 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 

a grove of thick, shiny leaves. The plants were 
three or four inches tall and seemed to be in the pink 
of condition. 

“This is for the top of your Christmas desk,” 
Margaret explained. 

“It’s perfectly beautiful,” exclaimed not only 
Ethel Blue but all the other girls, while Roger peered 
over their shoulders to see what It was. 

“I planted it myself,” said Margaret with con- 
siderable pride. “Each one Is a little grapefruit 
tree.” 

“Grapefruit? What we have for breakfast? It 
grows like this?” 

“Mother has some In a larger bowl and it Is 
really lovely as a centrepiece on the dining room 
table.” 

“Watch me save grapefruit seeds!” and Ethel 
Brown ran out of the room to leave an Immediate 
request In the kitchen that no grapefruit seeds should 
be thrown away when the fruit was being prepared 
for the table. 

“When Mr. Morton and I were In Florida last 
winter,” said Mrs. Morton, “they told us that it was 
not a great number of years ago that grapefruit was 
planted only because it was a handsome shrub on the 
lawn. The fruit never was eaten, but was thrown 
away after It fell from the tree.” 

“Now nobody can get enough of It,” smiled Helen. 

“Mother has a receipt for grapefruit marmalade 
that Is better than the English orange marmalade 
that Is made of both sweet and sour oranges,” said 
Dorothy. “Sometimes the sour oranges are hard 


A .SNOW MAN 


25 

to find in the market, but grapefruit seems to have 
both flavors in itself.” 

“Is it much work?” asked Margaret. 

“It isn’t much work at any one time but it takes 
several days to get it done.” 

“Why?” 

“First you have to cut up the fruit, peel and all, 
into tiny slivers. That’s a rather long undertaking 
and it’s hard unless you have a very, very sharp 
knife.” 

“I’ve discovered that in preparing them for break- 
fast.” 

“The fruit are of such different sizes that you have 
to weigh the result of your paring. To every pound 
of cut-up fruit add a pint of water and let it stand 
over night. In the morning pour off that water and 
fill the kettle again and let it boil until the toughest 
bit of skin is soft, and then let it stand over night 
once more.” 

“It seems to do an awful lot of resting,” remarked 
Roger. 

“A sort of ‘weary Willie,’ ” commented James. 

“When you’re ready to go at it again, you weigh 
it once more and add four times as many pounds of 
sugar as you have fruit.” 

“You must have to make it in a wash-boiler I” 

“Not quite as bad as that, but you’ll be surprised 
to find how much three or four grapefruit will make. 
You boil this together until it is as thick as you like 
to have your marmalade.” 

“I can recommend Aunt Louise’s marmalade,” 
said Ethel Brown. “It’s the very best I ever tasted. 


26 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 


She taught me to make these grapefruit chips,” and 
she handed about a bonbon dish laden with delicate 
strips of sugared peel. 

“Let’s have this receipt, too,” begged Margaret, 
as Roger went to answer the telephone. 

“You can squeeze out the juice and pulp and add 
a quart of water to a cup of juice, sweeten it and make 
grapefruit-ade instead of lemonade for a variety. 
Then take the skins and cut out all the white inside 
part as well as you can, leaving just the rind.” 

“The next step must be to snip the rind into these 
long, narrow shavings.” 

“It is, and you put them in cold water and let 
them come to a boil and boil twenty minutes. Then 
drain off all the water and add cold water and do it 
again.” 

“What’s the idea of two boilings?” asked James. 

“I suppose it must be to take all the bitterness 
out of the skin at the same time that it is getting 
soft.” 

“Does this have to stand over night?” 

“Yes, this sits and meditates all night. Then you 
put it on to boil again in a syrup made of one cup of 
water and four cups of sugar, and boil it until the 
bits are all saturated with the sweetness. If you 
want to eat them right off you roll them now in pow- 
dered sugar or confectioner’s sugar, but if you aren’t 
in a hurry you put them into a jar and keep the air 
out and roll them just before you want to serve 
them.” 

“They certainly are bully good,” remarked James, 
taking several more pieces. 


A SNOW MAN 


27 


“That call was from Tom Watkins,” announced 
Roger, returning from the telephone, and referring 
to a member of the United Service Club who, with 
his sister, Della, lived in New York. 

“O dear, they can’t cornel” prophesied Ethel 
Blue. 

“He says he has just been telephoning to the rail- 
road and they say that all the New Jersey trains are 
delayed and so Mrs. Watkins thought he’d better not 
try to bring Della out. She sends her love to you, 
Ethel Blue, and her best wishes for your birthday 
and says she’s got a present for you that is different 
from any plant you ever saw in a conservatory.” 

“That’s what Margaret’s is,” laughed Ethel. 
“Isn’t it queer you two girls should give me growing 
things when we were talking about gardens this after- 
noon and deciding to have one this summer.” 

“One !” repeated Dorothy. “Don’t forget mine. 
There’ll be two.” 

“If Aunt Louise should find a lot and start to 
build there’d be another,” suggested Ethel Brown. 

“O, let’s go into the gardening business,” cried 
Roger. “I’ve already offered to be the laboring 
man at the beck and call of these young women all 
for the small reward of having all the sweetpeas 
I want to pick.” 

“What we’re afraid of is that he won’t want to 
pick them,” laughed Ethel Brown. “We’re think- 
ing of binding him to do a certain amount of picking 
every day.” 

“Anyway, the Morton-Smith families are going to 
have gardens and Helen is going to write for seed 


28 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 


catalogues this very night before she seeks her downy 
couch — she has vowed she will.” 

“Mother has always had a successful garden, 
she’ll be able to give you advice,” offered Margaret. 

“We’ll ask it from every one we know, I rather 
imagine,” and Dorothy beamed at the prospect of 
doing something that had been one of her great 
desires all her life. 

The little thicket of grapefruit trees served as 
the centrepiece of Ethel Blue’s dinner table, and 
every one admired all over again its glossy leaves 
and sturdy stems. 

“When spring comes we’ll set them out in the 
garden and see what happens,” promised Ethel Blue. 

“We have grapefruit salad to-night. You must 
have sent a wireless over to the kitchen,” Ethel 
Brown declared to Margaret. 

It was a delicious salad, the cubes of the grape- 
fruit being mixed with cubes of apple and of celery, 
garnished with cherries and served on crisp yellow- 
green lettuce leaves with French dressing. 

Ethel Blue always liked to see her Aunt Marion 
make French dressing at the table, for her white 
hands moved swiftly and skilfully among the ingre- 
dients. Mary brought her a bowl that had been 
chilled on ice. Into it she poured four tablespoon- 
fuls of olive oil, added a scant half teaspoonful of 
salt with a dash of red pepper which she stirred until 
the salt was dissolved. To that combination she 
added one tablespoonful either of lemon juice or 
vinegar a drop at a time and stirring constantly so 
that the oil might take up its sharper neighbor. 


A SNOW MAN 


29 


Dorothy particularly approved her Aunt Marion’s 
manner of putting her salads together. To-night, 
for instance, she did not have the plates brought 
in from the kitchen with the salad already upon 
them. 

“That always reminds me of a church fair,” she 
declared. 

She was willing to give herself the trouble of pre- 
paring the salad for her family and guests with her 
own hands. From a bowl of lettuce she selected the 
choicest leaves for the plate before her; upon these 
she placed the fruit and celery mixture, dotted the 
top with a cherry and poured the dressing over all. 
It was fascinating to watch her, and Margaret 
wished that her mother served salad that way. 

The Club was indeed incomplete without the Wat- 
kinses, but the members nevertheless were sufficiently 
amused by several of the “Does” — things to do — 
that one or another suggested. First they did 
shadow drawings. The dining table proved to be 
the most convenient spot for that. They all sat 
around under the strong electric light. Each had 
a block of rather heavy paper with a rough surface, 
and each was given a camel’s hair brush, a bottle of 
ink, some water and a small saucer. From a vase 
of flowers and leaves and ferns which Mrs. Morton 
contributed to the game each selected what he wanted 
to draw. Then, holding his leaf so that the light 
threw a sharp shadow upon his pad, he quickly 
painted the shadow with the ink, thinning it with 
water upon the saucer so that the finished painting 
showed several shades of gray. 


30 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 

“The beauty of this stunt is that a fellow who 
can’t draw at all can turn out almost as good a 
masterpiece as Ethel Blue here, who has the makings 
of a real artist,” and James gazed at his production 
with every evidence of satisfaction. 

As it happened none of them except Ethel Blue 
could draw at all well, so that the next game had 
especial difficulties. 

“All there is to it is to draw something and let us 
guess what it is,” said Ethel Blue. 

“You haven’t given all the rules,” corrected Roger. 
“Ethel Blue makes two dots on a piece of paper — or 
a short line and a curve — anything she feels like 
making. Then we copy them and draw something 
that will include those two marks and she sits up and 
‘ha-has’ and guesses what it is.” 

“I promise not to laugh,” said Ethel Blue. 

“Don’t make any such rash promise,” urged 
Helen. “You might do yourself an injury trying 
not to when you see mine.” 

It was fortunate for Ethel Blue that she was re- 
leased from the promise, for her guesses went wide 
of the mark. Ethel Brown made something that 
she guessed to be a hen, Roger called it a book, 
Dicky maintained firmly that it was a portrait of 
himself. The rest gave it up, and they all needed a 
long argument by the artist to believe that she had 
meant to draw a pair of candlesticks. 

“Somebody think of a game where Ethel Brown 
can do herself justice,” cried James, but no one 
seemed to have any inspiration, so they all went to 
the fire, where they cracked nuts and told stories. 


A SNOW MAN 


31 


“If you’ll write those orders for the seed cata- 
logues I’ll post them to-night,” James suggested to 
Helen. 

“Oh, will you? Margaret and I will write them 
together.” 

“What’s the rush?” demanded Roger. “This Is 
only January.” 

“I know just how the girls feel,” sympathized 
James. “When I make up my mind to do a thing 
I want to begin right off, and the first step of this 
new scheme is to get the catalogues hereinbefore 
mentioned.” 

“We can plan out our back yards any time, I 
should think,” said Dorothy. 

“Father says that somebody — was It Bacon, Mar- 
garet? — says that a man’s nature runs always either 
to herbs or to weeds. Let’s start ours running to 
herbs In the first month of the year and perhaps by 
the time the herbs appear we’ll catch up with them.” 


CHAPTER III 


DOROTHY TELLS HER SECRET 

H OW queer it is that when you’re interested in 
something you keep seeing and hearing things 
connected with it!” exclaimed Ethel Blue about a 
week after her birthday, when Della Watkins came 
out from town to bring her her belated birth- 
day gift. • 

The present proved to be a slender hillock covered 
with a silky green growth exquisite in texture and 
color. 

“What is it? What is it?” cried Ethel Blue. 
“We mentioned plants and gardens on my birthday 
and that very evening Margaret brought me this 
grapefruit jungle and now you’ve brought me this. 
Do tell me exactly what it is.” 

“A cone, child. That’s all. A Norway spruce 
cone. When it is dry its scales are open. I filled 
them with grass seed and put the cone in a small 
tumbler so that the lower end might be damp all 
the time. The dampness makes the scales close 
and starts the seed to sprouting. This has been 
growing a few days and the cone is almost hidden.” 

“It’s one of the prettiest plants — would you call 
it a plant or a greenhouse? — I ever saw. Does it 
have to be a Norway spruce cone?” 

“O, no. Only they have very regular scales that 
32 


DOROTHY TELLS HER SECRET 33 

hold the seed well. I brought you out two more 
of them and some grass seed and canary seed so you 
could try it for yourself.” 

“You’re a perfect duck,” and Ethel gave her 
friend a hug. “Now let me show you what one of 
the girls at school gave Ethel Brown.” 

She indicated a strange-looking brown object hang- 
ing before the window. 

“What in the world is it? It looks — yes, it looks 
like a sweet potato.” 

“That’s what it is — a sweet potato with one end 
cut off and a cage of tape to hold it. You see it’s 
sprouting already, and they say that the vines hang 
down from it and it looks like a little green hanging 
basket.” 

“What’s the object of cutting off the end?” 

“Anna — that’s Ethel Brown’s friend — said that 
she scooped hers out just a little bit and put a few 
drops of water inside so that the sun shouldn’t dry 
it too much.” 

“I should think it would grow better in a dark 
place. Don’t you know how Irish potatoes send out 
those white shoots when they’re in the cellar?” 

“She said she started hers in the cellar and then 
brought them into the light.” 

“Just like bulbs.” 

“Exactly. Aunt Louise is having great luck with 
her bulbs now. She had them in the cellar and now 
she is bringing them out a pot at a time, so she has 
something new coming forward every few days.” 

“Dorothy doesn’t care much for bulbs, but I think 
it’s pretty good fun. You can make them blossom 
66 


34 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 

just about when you please by keeping them in the 
dark or bringing them into the light. I’m going to 
ask Aunt Louise to give me some of hers when 
they’re finished flowering. She says you can plant 
them out of doors and next year they’ll bloom in 
the garden.” 

“Mother has some this winter, too. I’ll ask her 
for them after she’s through forcing them.” 

“I like them in the garden, too — tulips and hya- 
cinths and daffodils and narcissus and jonquils. 
They come so early and give you a feeling that spring 
really has arrived.” 

“You look as if spring had really arrived in the 
house here. If there wasn’t a little bit of that snow 
man left in front I shouldn’t know it had snowed last 
week. How in the world did you get all these 
shrubs to blossom now? They don’t seem to realize 
that it’s only January.” 

“That’s another thing that’s happened since my 
birthday. Margaret told us about bringing branches 
of the spring shrubs into the house and making them 
come out in water, so we’ve been trying it. She 
sent over those yellow bells, the Forsythia, and Roger 
brought in the pussy willows from the brook on the 
way to Mr. Emerson’s.” 

“This thorny red affair is the Japan quince, but I 
don’t recognize these others.” 

“That’s because you’re a city girl! You’ll laugh 
when I tell you what they are.” 

“They don’t look like flowering shrubs to me.” 

“They aren’t. They’re flowering trees; fruit 
trees I” 


DOROTHY TELLS HER SECRET 35 

“O-o ! That really is a peach blossom, then !” 

“The deep pink is peach, and the delicate pink is 
apple and the white is plum.” 

“They’re perfectly dear. Tell me how you coaxed 
them out. Surely you didn’t just keep them in 
water in this room?” 

“We put them in the sunniest window we had, not 
too near the glass, because it wouldn’t do for them 
to run any chance of getting chilled. They stayed 
there as long as the sun did, and then we moved 
them to another warm spot and we were very careful 
about them at night.” 

“How often do you change the water?” 

“Every two or three days; and once in a while we 
spray them to keep the upper part fresh — and there 
you are. It’s fun to watch them come out. Don’t 
you want to take some switches back to town with 
you ?” 

Della did. 

“They make me think of a scheme that my Aunt 
Rose is putting into operation. She went round the 
world year before last,” she said, “and she saw in 
Japan lots of plants growing in earthenware vases 
hanging against the wall or in a long bamboo cut so 
that small water bottles might be slipped in. She 
has some of the very prettiest wall decorations now — 
a queer looking greeny-brown pottery vase has two 
or three sprigs of English ivy. Another with orange 
tints has nasturtiums and another tradescantia.” 

“Are they growing in water?” 

“The ivy and the tradescantia are, but the nas- 
turtiums and a perfectly darling morning glory have 


36 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 

earth. She’s growing bulbs in them, too, only she 
doesn’t use plain water or earth, just bulb fibre.’-’ 

“What’s that?” 

“Why, bulbs are such fat creatures that they don’t 
need the outside food they would get from earth; all 
they want is plenty of water. This fibre stuff holds 
enough water to keep them damp all the time, and 
it isn’t messy in the house like dirt.” 

“What are you girls talking about?” asked Doro- 
thy, who came in with Ethel Brown at this moment. 

Both of them were interested in the addition that 
Della had made to their knowledge of flowers and 
gardening. 

“Every day I feel myself drawn into more and 
more gardening,” exclaimed Dorothy. “I’ve set up 
a notebook already.” 

“In January!” laughed Della. 

“January seems to be the time to do your thinking 
and planning; that’s what the people who know tell 
me.” 

“It seems to be the time for some action,” retorted 
Della, waving her hand at the blossoming branches 
about the room. 

“Aren’t they wonderful? I always knew you 
could bring them out quickly in the house after the 
buds were started out of doors, but these fellows 
didn’t seem to be started at all — and look at them 1” 

“Mother says they’ve done so well because we’ve 
been careful to keep them evenly warm,” said Ethel 
Brown. “Dorothy’s got the finest piece of news to 
tell you. If she doesn’t tell you pretty soon I shall 
come out with it myself!” 


DOROTHY TELLS HER SECRET 37 

“O, let her tell her own secret!” remonstrated 
Ethel Blue. “What is it?” 

“You know that sloping piece of ground about a 
quarter of a mile beyond the Clarks’ on the road to 
Mr. Emerson’s?” 

“You don’t mean the field with the brook where 
Roger got the pussy willows?” 

“This side of it. There’s a lovely view across the 
meadows on the other side of the road, and the land 
runs back to some rocks and big trees.” 

“Certainly I know it,” assented Ethel Blue. 
“There’s a hillock on it that’s the place I’ve chosen 
for a house when I grow up and build one.” 

“Well, you can’t have it because I’ve got there 
first!” 

“What do you mean? Has Aunt Louise — ?” 

“She has.” 

“How grand! How grand! You’ll be farther 
away from us than you are now but it’s a dear duck 
of a spot — ” 

“And it’s right on the way to Grandfather Emer- 
son’s,” added Ethel Brown. 

“Mother signed the papers this morning and she’s 
going to begin to build as soon as the weather will 
allow.” 

“With peach trees in blossom now that ought not 
to be far off,” laughed Della, waving her hand again 
at the blossoms that pleased her so much. 

“How large a house is she going to build?” asked 
Ethel Blue. 

“Not very big. Large enough for her and me and 
a guest or two and of course Elisabeth and Miss 


38 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 

Merrlam,” referring to a Belgian baby who had been 
brought to the United Service Club from war-stricken 
Belgium, and to her caretaker, a charming young 
woman from the School of Mothercraft. 

“Will it be made of concrete?” 

“Yes, and Mother says we may all help a lot in 
making the plans and in deciding on the decoration 
and everything.” 

“Isn’t she the darling! It will be the next best 
thing to building a house yourself I” 

“There will be a garage behind the house.” 

“A garage 1 Is Aunt Louise going to set up a 
car?” 

“Just a small one that she can drive herself. Back 
of the garage there’s plenty of space for a garden 
and she says she’ll turn that over to me. I can do 
anything I want with it as long as I’ll be sure to have 
enough vegetables for the table and lots of flowers 
for the house.” 

“O, my; O, my; what fun we’ll have,” ejaculated 
Della, who knew that Dorothy could have no pleas- 
ure that she would not share equally with the rest 
of the Club. 

“I came over now to see if you people didn’t want 
to walk over there and see it.” 

“This minute?” 

“This minute.” 

“Of course we do — if Della doesn’t have to take 
the train back yet?” 

“Not for a long time. I’d take a later one any- 
way; I couldn’t wait until the Saturday Club meeting 
to see it.” 


DOROTHY TELLS HER SECRET 39 

“How did you know Td suggest a walk there for 
the Saturday Club meeting?” 

“Could you help it?” retorted Della, laughing. 

They timed themselves so that they might know 
just how far away from them Dorothy was going to 
be and they found that it was just about half way to 
Grandfather Emerson’s. As somebody from the 
Mortons’ went there every day, and as the distance 
was, in reality, not long, they were reassured as to 
the Smiths being quite out in the country as the 
change had seemed to them at first. 

“You won’t be able to live in the house this sum- 
mer, will you?” asked Ethel Blue. 

“Not until late in the summer or perhaps even 
later than that. Mother says she isn’t in a hurry 
because she wants the work to be done well.” 

“Then you won’t plant the garden this year?” 

“Indeed I shall. I’m going to plant the new 
garden and the garden where we are now.” 

“Roger will strike on doing all the digging.” 

“He’ll have to have a helper on the new garden, 
but I’ll plant his sweetpeas for him just the same. 
At the new place I’m going to have a large garden.” 

“Up here on the hill?” 

The girls were climbing up the ascent that rose 
sharply from the road. 

“The house will perch on top of this little hill. 
Back of it, you see, on top of the ridge, it’s quite flat 
and the garden will be there. I was talking about 
it with Mr. Emerson this morning — ” 

“Oho, you’ve called Grandfather into consulta- 
tion already!” 


40 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 

“He’s going to be our nearest neighbor on that 
side. He said that a ridge like this was one of the 
best places for planting because it has several ex- 
posures to the sun and you can find a spot to suit the 
fancy of about every plant there is.” 

“Your garden will be cut off from the house by the 
garage. Shall you have another nearer the road?” 

“Next summer there will have to be planting of 
trees and shrubs and vines around the house but this 
year I shall attend to the one up here in the field.” 

“Brrrr! It looks bleak enough now,” shivered 
Ethel Blue. 

“Let’s go up in those woods and see what’s there.” 

“Has Aunt Louise bought them?” 

“No, but she wants to. They don’t belong to the 
same man who owned this piece of land. They 
belong to the Clarks. She’s going to see about it 
right off, because it looks so attractive and rocky and 
woodsy.” 

“You’d have the brook, too.” 

“I hope she’ll be able to get it. Of course just 
this piece is awfully pretty, and this is the only place 
for a house, but the meadow with the brook and the 
rocks and the woods at the back would be too lovely 
for words. Why, you’d feel as if you had an 
estate.” 

The girls laughed at Dorothy’s enthusiasm over 
the small number of acres that were included even 
in the combined lots of land, but they agreed with her 
that the additional land offered a variety that was 
worth working hard to obtain. 

They made their way up the slope and among the 


DOROTHY TELLS HER SECRET 41 

jumble of rocks that looked as if giants had been 
tossing them about in sport. Small trees grew from 
between them as they lay heaped in disorder and 
taller growths stretched skyward from an occasional 
open space. The brook began in a spring that 
bubbled clear and cold, from under a slab of rock. 
Round about it all was covered with moss, still green, 
though frozen stiff by the snowstorm’s chilly blasts. 
Shrivelled ferns bending over its mouth promised 
summer beauties. 

“What a lovely spotl” cried Ethel Blue. “This 
is where fairies and wood nymphs live when that 
drift melts. Don’t you know this must be a great 
gathering place for birds? Can’t you see them now 
dipping their beaks into the water and cocking their 
heads up at the sky afterwards I” and she quoted: — 

“Dip, birds, dip 

Where the ferns lean over, 

And their crinkled edges drip, 

Haunt and hover.” 

“Here’s the best place yeti” called Dorothy, who 
had pushed on and was now out of sight. 

“Where are you?” 

“Here. See if you can find me,” came a muffled 
answer. 

“Where do you suppose she went to?” asked Ethel 
Brown, as they all three straightened themselves, yet 
saw no sign of Dorothy. 

“I hope she hasn’t fallen down a precipice and 
been killed!” said Ethel Blue, whose imagination 
sometimes ran away with her. 


42 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 

“More likely she has twisted her ankle,” said 
practical Ethel Brown. 

“She wouldn’t sound as gay as that if anything 
had happened to her,” Della reminded them. 

The cries that kept reaching them were unques- 
tionably cheerful but where they came from was 
a problem that they did not seem able to solve. 
It was only when Dorothy poked out her head 
from behind a rock almost in front of them that 
they saw the entrance of what looked like a real 
cave. 

“It’s the best imitation of a cave I ever did see !” 
the explorer exclaimed. “These rocks have tumbled 
into just the right position to make the very best 
house I Come in.” 

Her guests were eager to accept her invitation. 
There was space enough for all of them and two or 
three more might easily be accommodated within, 
while a bit of smooth grass outside the entrance al- 
most added another room, “if you aren’t particular 
about a roof,” as Ethel Brown said. 

“Do you suppose Roger has never found this!” 
wondered Dorothy. “See, there’s room enough for 
a fireplace with a chimney. You could cook here. 
You could sleep here. You could live here!” 

The others laughed at her enthusiasm, but they 
themselves were just as enthusiastic. The possibil- 
ities of spending whole days here in the shade and 
cool of the trees and rocks and of imagining that 
they were in the highlands of Scotland left them 
almost gasping. 

“Don’t you remember when Fitz-James first sees 


DOROTHY TELLS HER SECRET 43 

Ellen in the ‘Lady of the Lake’ ?” asked Ethel Blue. 
“He was separated from his men and found himself 
in a rocky glen overlooking a lake. The rocks were 
bigger than these but we can pretend they were just 
the same,” and she recited a few lines from a poem 
whose story they all knew and loved. 

“But not a setting beam could glow 
Within the dark ravines below, 

Where twined the path in shadow hid, 

Round many a rocky pyramid.” 

“I remember; he looked at the view a long time 
and then he blew his horn again to see if he could 
make any of his men hear him, and Ellen came glid- 
ing around a point of land in a skiff. She thought 
it was her father calling her.” 

“And the stranger went home to their lodge and 
fell in love with her — O, it’s awfully romantic. I 
must read it again,” and Dorothy gazed at the rocks 
around her as if she were really in Scotland. 

“Has anybody a knife?” asked Della’s clear 
voice, bringing them all sharply back to America 
and Rosemont. “My aunt — ^the one who has the 
hanging flowerpots I was telling you about — isn’t 
a bit well and I thought I’d make her a little fernery 
that she could look at as she lies in bed.” 

“But the ferns are all dried up.” 

“ ‘Greenery’ is a better name. Here’s a scrap 
of partridge berry with a red berry still clinging to 
it, and here’s a bit of moss as green as it was in sum- 
mer, and here — yes, it’s alive, it really is!” and she 
held up in triumph a tiny fern that had been so 


44 


ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 


sheltered under the edge of a boulder that it had 
kept fresh and happy. 

There was nothing more to reward their search, 
for they all hunted with 
Della, but she was not 
discouraged. 

“I only want a hand- 
ful of growing things,” 
she explained. “I put 
these in a finger bowl, 
and sprinkle a few seeds 
of grass or canary seed 
on the moss and dash 
some water on it from 
the tips of my fingers. 
Another finger bowl up- 
side down makes the 
cover. The sick person 
can see what is going on 
inside right through the 
glass without having to 
raise her head.” 

“How often do you 
water it?” 

“Only once or twice a week, because the moisture 
collects on the upper glass of the little greenhouse 
and falls down again on the plants and keeps them, 
wet.” 

“We’ll keep our eyes open every time we come 
here,” promised Dorothy. “There’s no reason why 
you couldn’t add a little root of this or that any 
time you want to.” 



Partridge Berry 


DOROTHY TELLS HER SECRET 45 

“I know Aunty will be delighted with it,” cried 
Della, much pleased. “She likes all plants, but es- 
pecially things that are a little bit different. That’s 
why she spends so much time selecting her wall 
vases — so that they shall be unlike other people’s.” 

“Fitz-James’s woods,” as they already called the 
bit of forest that Dorothy hoped to have possession 
of, extended back from the road and spread until 
it joined Grandfather Emerson’s woods on one side 
and what was called by the Rosemonters “the West 
Woods” on the other. The girls walked home by a 
path that took them into Rosemont not far from the 
station where Della was to take the train. 

“Until you notice what there really is in the woods 
in winter you think there isn’t anything worth look- 
ing at,” said Ethel Blue, walking along with her 
eyes in the tree crowns. 

“The shapes of the different trees are as distinct 
now as they are in summer,” declared Ethel Brown. 
“You’d know that one was an oak, and the one next 
to it a beech, wouldn’t you?” 

“I don’t know whether I would or not,” confessed 
Dorothy honestly, “but I can almost always tell a 
tree by its bark.” 

“I can tell a chestnut by its bark nowadays,” as- 
serted Ethel Blue, “because it hasn’t any!” 

“What on earth do you mean?” inquired city- 
bred Della. 

“Something or other has killed all the chestnuts 
in this part of the world in the last two or three 
years. Don’t you see all these dead trees standing 
with bare trunks?” 


46 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 

“Poor old things I Is it going to last?” 

“It' spread up the Hudson and east and west in 
New York and Massachusetts, and south into Penn- 
sylvania.” 

“Roger was telling Grandfather a few days ago 
that a farmer was telling him that he thought the 
trouble — the pest or the blight or whatever it was — 
had been stopped.” 

“I remember now seeing a lot of dead trees some- 
where when one of Father’s parishioners took us 
motoring in the autumn. I didn’t know the chestnut 
crop was threatened.” 

“Chestnuts weren’t any more expensive this year. 
They must have imported them from far-off states.” 

There were still pools of water in the wood path, 
left by the melting snow, and the grass that they 
touched seemed a trifle greener than that beside the 
narrow road. Once in a while a bit of vivid green 
• betrayed a plant that had found shelter under an 
overhanging stone. The leaves were for the most 
part dry enough again to rustle under their feet. 
Evergreens stood out sharply dark against the leaf- 
less trees. 

“What are the trees that still have a few leaves 
left clinging to them?” asked Della. 

“Oaks. Do you know why the leaves stay on?” 

“Is it a story?” 

“Yes, a pleasant story. Once the Great Evil 
Spirit threatened to destroy the whole world. The 
trees heard the threat and the oak tree begged him 
not to do anything so wicked. He insisted but at 
last he agreed not to do it until the last leaf had 


DOROTHY TELLS HER SECRET 47 

fallen in the autumn. All the trees meant to hold 
on to their leaves so as to ward off the awful dis- 
aster, but one after the other they let them go — all 
except the oak. The oak never yet has let fall 
every one of its leaves and so the Evil Spirit never 
has had a chance to put his threat into execution.” 

“That’s a lesson in success, isn’t it? Stick to 
whatever it is you want to do and you’re sure to 
succeed.” 

“Watch me make my garden succeed,” cried 
Dorothy. “If ‘sticking’ will make it a success I’m 
a stick!” 


CHAPTER IV 


GARDENING ON PAPER 

W HEN Saturday came and the United Service 
Club tramped over Dorothy’s new domain, 
including the domain that she hoped to have but 
was not yet sure of, every member agreed that the 
prospect was one that gave satisfaction to the Club 
as well as the possibility of pleasure and comfort 
to Mrs. Smith and Dorothy. The knoll they hailed 
as the exact spot where a house should go; the ridge 
behind it as precisely suited to the needs of a garden. 

As to the region of the meadow and the brook 
and the rocks and the trees they all hoped most 
earnestly that Mrs. Smith would be able to buy it, 
for they foresaw that it would provide much amuse- 
ment for all of them during the coming summer and 
many to follow. 

Strangely enough Roger had never found the 
cave, and he looked on it with yearning. 

“Why in the world didn’t I know of that three 
or four years ago !” he exclaimed. “I should have 
lived out here all summer!” 

“That’s what we’d like to do,” replied the Ethels 
earnestly. “We’ll let you come whenever you want 
to.” 

Roger gave a sniff, but the girls knew from his 
longing gaze that he was quite as eager as they to 
48 


GARDENING ON PAPER 


65 


ground fine, mixed with mayonnaise and put on a 
crisp lettuce leaf between slices of whole wheat 
bread, Mrs. Smith sang the old English song to 
them. 

“Springe is yeomen in, 

Dappled lark singe; 

Snow melteth, 

Runnell pelteth, 

Smelleth winde of newe buddinge. 

“Summer is yeomen in, 

Loude singe eueku; 

Groweth scede, 

Bloweth meade, 

And springeth the weede newe. 

“Autumne is yeomen in, 

Ceres fillcth home; 

Reaper swinketh, 

Farmer drinketh, 

Creaketh waine with newe eorn. 

“Winter is yeomen in, 

With stormy sadde eheere; 

In the paddoeke, 

Whistle ruddoek, 

Brightc sparke in the dead yeare.” 

“That’s a good stanza to end with,” said Ethel 
Blue, as she bade her aunt “Good-bye.” “We’ve 
been talking about gardens and plants and flowers all 
the afternoon, and it would have seemed queer to 
put on a heavy coat to go home in if you hadn’t said 
‘Winter is yeomen in.’ ” 

68 


CHAPTER V 


A DEFECT IN THE TITLE 

I N Spite of their having made such an early start 
in talking about gardens the members of the 
United Service Club did not weary of the idea or 
cease to plan for what they were going to do. The 
only drawback that they found in gardening as a 
Club activity was that the gardens were for them- 
selves and their families and they did not see exactly 
how there was any ‘‘service’’ in them. 

“I’ll trust you youngsters to do some good work 
for somebody in connection with them,” asserted 
Grandfather Emerson one day when Roger had been 
talking over with him his pet plan for remodelling 
the old Emerson farmhouse into a place suitable for 
the summer shelter of poor women and children 
from the city who needed country air and relief from 
hunger and anxiety. 

“We aren’t rushing anything now,” Roger had 
explained, “because we boys are all going to graduate 
this June and we have our examinations to think 
about. They must come first with us. But later 
on we’ll be ready for work of some sort and we 
haven’t anything on the carpet except our gardens.” 

“There are many good works to be done with the 
help of a garden,” replied Mr. Emerson. “Ask 
66 


A DEFECT IN THE TITLE 67 

your grandmother to tell you how she has sent 
flowers into New York for the poor for many, many 
summers. There are people right here in Rosemont 
who haven’t enough ground to raise any vegetables 
on and they are glad to have fresh corn and Brussels 
sprouts sent to them. If you really do undertake 
this farmhouse scheme there’ll have to be a large 
vegetable garden planted near the house to supply 
it, and you can add a few flower beds. The old 
place will look better flower-dressed than empty, 
and perhaps some of the women and children will 
like to work in the garden.” 

Roger went home comforted, for he was very 
loyal to the Club and its work and he did not want 
to become so involved with other matters that he 
could not give himself to the purpose for which the 
Club was organized — helping others. 

As he passed the Miss Clarks he stopped to give 
their furnace its nightly shaking, for he was the 
accredited furnace man for them and his Aunt Louise 
as well as for his mother. He added the money that 
he earned to the treasury of the Club so that there 
might always be enough there to do a kind act when- 
ever there should be a chance. 

As he labored with the shaker and the noise of 
his struggles was sent upward through the registers 
a voice called to him down the cellar stairs. 

“Ro-ger; Roger!” 

“Yes, ma’am,” replied Roger, wishing the old 
ladies would let him alone until he had finished his 
work. 

“Come up here, please, when you’ve done.” 


68 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 


“Very well,” he agreed, and went on with his 
racket. 

.When he went upstairs he found that the cause 
of his summons was the arrival of a young man who 
was apparently about the age of Edward Watkins, 
the doctor brother of Tom and Della. 

“My nephew is a law student,” said Miss Clark as 
she introduced the two young people, “and I want 
him to know all of our neighbors.” 

“My name is Stanley Clark,” said the newcomer, 
shaking hands cordially. “I’m going to be here for 
a long time so I hope I’ll see you often.” 

Roger liked him at once and thought his manner 
particularly pleasant in view of the fact that he was 
several years older. Roger was so accustomed to 
the companionship of Edward Watkins, who fre- 
quently joined the Club in their festivities and who 
often came to Rosemont to call on Miss Merriam, 
that the difference did not seem to him a cause of 
embarrassment. He was unusually easy for a boy 
of his age because he had always been accustomed to 
take his sailor father’s place at home in the enter- 
tainment of his mother’s guests. 

Young Clark, on his side, found his new acquaint- 
ance a boy worth talking to, and they got on well. 
He was studying at a law school in the city, it 
seemed, and commuted every day. 

“It’s a long ride,” he agreed when Roger sug- 
gested it, “but when I get home I have the good 
country air to breathe and I’d rather have that than 
town amusements just now when I’m working hard.” 

Roger spoke of Edward Watkins and Stanley was 


A DEFECT IN THE TITLE 69 

interested in the possibility of meeting him. Evi- 
dently his aunts had told him all about the Belgian 
baby and Miss Merriam, for he said Elisabeth 
would be the nearest approach to a soldier from a 
Belgian battlefield that he had seen. 

Roger left with the feeling that his new acquaint- 
ance would be a desirable addition to the neighbor- 
hood group and he was so pleased that he stopped in 
at his Aunt Louise’s not only to shake the furnace 
but to tell her about Stanley Clark. 



During the next month they all came to know him 
well and they liked his cheerfulness and his interest 
in what they were doing and planning. On Satur- 
days he helped Roger build a hot bed in the sunniest 
spot against the side of the kitchen ell. They found 
that the frost had not stiffened the ground after they 
managed to dig down a foot, so that the excavation 
was not as hard as they had expected. They dug a 
hole the size of two window sashes and four feet 
deep, lining the sides with some old bricks that they 
found in the cellar. At first they filled the entire 
bed with fresh stable manure and straw. After it 


70 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 

had stayed under the glass two days it was quite hot 
and they beat it down a foot and put on six inches of 
soil made one-half of compost and one-half of leaf 
mould that they found in a sheltered corner of the 
West Woods. 

“Grandfather didn’t believe we could manage to 
get good soil at this season even if we did succeed 
in digging the hole, but when I make up my mind to 
do a thing I like to succeed,” said Roger trium- 
phantly when they had fitted the sashes on to planks 
that sloped at the sides so that rain would run off 
the glass, and called the girls out to admire their 
result. 

“What are we going to put in here first?” asked 
Ethel Brown, who liked to get at the practical side 
of matters at once. 

“I’d like to have some violets,” said Ethel Blue. 
“Could I have a corner for them? I’ve had some 
plants promised me from the Glen Point greenhouse 
man. Margaret is going to bring them over as soon 
as I’m ready for them.” 

“I want to see if I can beat Dicky with early vege- 
tables,” declared Roger. “I’m going to start early 
parsley and cabbage and lettuce, cauliflower and egg 
plants, radishes and peas and corn in shallow boxes 
— flats Grandfather says they’re called — in my room 
and the kitchen where it’s warm and sunny, and when 
they’ve sprouted three leaves I’ll set them out here 
and plant some more in the flats.” 

“Won’t transplanting them twice set them back?” 

“If you take up enough earth around them they 
ought not to know that they’ve taken a journey.” 


A DEFECT IN THE TITLE 


71 


“IVe done a lot of transplanting of wild plants 
from the woods,” said Stanley, “and I found that if 
I was careful to do that they didn’t even wilt.” 

“Why can’t we start some of the flower seeds here 
and have early blossoms?” 

“You can. I don’t see why we can’t keep it going 
all the time and have a constant supply of flowers 
and vegetables earlier than we should if w'e trusted 
to Mother Nature to do the work unaided.” 

“Then in the autumn we can stow away here some 
of the plants we want to save, geraniums and be- 
gonias, and plants that are pretty indoors, and take 
them into the house when the indoor ones become 
shabby.” 

“Evidently right in the heart of summer Is the 
only time this article won’t be in use,” decided Stan- 
ley, laughing at their eagerness. “Have you got 
anything to cover it with when the spring sunshine 
grows too hot?” 

“There Is an old hemp rug and some straw mat- 
ting in the attic — ^won’t they do?” 

“Perfectly. Lay them over the glass so that the 
delicate little plants won’t get burned. You can 
raise the sashes, too.” 

“If we don’t forget to close them before the sun 
sets and the night chill comes on, I suppose,” smiled 
Ethel Blue. “Mr. Emerson says that seeds under 
glass do better If they’re covered with newspaper 
until they start. 

It was about the middle of March when Mrs. 
Smith went In to call on her neighbors, the Miss 
Clarks, one evening. They were at home and after 


72 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 

a talk on the ever-absorbing theme of the war Mrs. 
Smith said, 

“I really came in here on business. I hope you’ve 
decided to sell me the meadow lot next to my knoll. 
If you’ve made up your minds hadn’t I better tell my 
lawyer to make out the papers at once?” 

“Sister and I made up our minds some time ago, 
dear Mrs. Smith, and we wrote to Brother William 
about it before he came to stay with us, and he was 
willing, and Stanley, here, who is the only other heir 
of the estate that we know about, has no objection.” 

“That gives me the greatest pleasure. I’ll tell my 
lawyer, then, to have the title looked up right away 
and make out the deed — though I feel as if I should 
apologize for looking up the title of land that has 
been in your family as long as Mr. Emerson’s has 
been in his.” 

“You needn’t feel at all apologetic,” broke in 
Stanley. “It’s never safe to buy property without 
having a clear title, and we aren’t sure that we are 
in a position to give you a clear title.” 

“That’s why we haven’t spoken to you about it 
before,” said the elder Miss Clark; “we were wait- 
ing to try to make it all straight before we said any- 
thing about it one way or the other.” 

“Not give me a clear title!” cried Mrs. Smith. 
“Do you mean that I won’t be able to buy it? Why, 
I don’t know what Dorothy will do if we can’t get 
that bit with the brook; she has set her heart on 
it.” 

“We want you to have it not only for Dorothy’s 
sake but for our own. It isn’t a good building lot — 


A DEFECT IN THE TITLE 73 

it’s too damp — and we’re lucky to have an offer for 
it.” 

“Can you tell me just what the trouble is? It 
seems as if it ought to be straight since all of you 
heirs agree to the sale.” 

“The difficulty is,” said Stanley, “that we aren’t 
sure that we are all the heirs. We thought we were, 
but Uncle William made some inquiries on his way 
here, and he learned enough to disquiet him.” 

“Our father, John Clark, had a sister Judith,” 
explained the younger Miss Clark. “They lived 
here on the Clark estate which had belonged to the 
family for many generations. Then Judith married 
a man named Leonard — Peter Leonard — and went 
to Nebraska at a time when Nebraska was harder to 
reach than California is now. That was long before 
the Civil War and during those frontier days Aunt 
Judith and Uncle Peter evidently were tossed about 
to the limit of their endurance. Her letters came 
less and less often and they always told of some new 
grief — the death of a child or the loss of some piece 
of property. Finally the letters ceased altogether. 
I don’t understand why her family didn’t hold her 
more closely, but they lost sight of her entirely.” 

“Probably it was more her fault than theirs,” re- 
plied Mrs. Smith softly, recalling that there had been 
a time when her own pride had forbade her letting 
her people know that she was in dire distress. 

“It doesn’t make much difference to-day whose 
fault it was,” declared Stanley Clark cheerfully; “the 
part of the story that interests us is that the family 
thought that all Great-aunt Judith’s children were 


74 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 

dead. Here is where Uncle William got his sur- 
prise. When he was coming on from Arkansas he 
stopped over for a day at the town where Aunt 
Judith had posted her last letter to Grandfather, 
about sixty years ago. There he learned from the 
records that she was dead and all her children were 
dead — except one.” 

“Except one!” repeated Mrs. Smith. “Bom 
after she ceased writing home?” 

“Exactly. Now this daughter — Emily was her 
name — left the town after her parents died and there 
is no way of finding out where she went. One or 
two of the old people remember that the Leonard 
girl left, but nothing more.” 

“She may be living now.” 

“Certainly she may; and she may have married 
and had a dozen children. You see, until we can 
find out something about this Emily we can’t give a 
clear title to the land.” 

Mrs. Smith nodded her understanding. 

“It’s lucky we’ve never been willing to sell any of 
the old estate,” said Mr. William Clark, who had 
entered and been listening to the story. “If we had 
we should, quite ignorantly, have given a defective 
title.” 

“Isn’t it possible, after making as long and 
thorough a search as you can, to take the case into 
court and have the judge declare the title you give to 
be valid, under the circumstances?” 

“That is done ; but you can see that such a decision 
would be granted only after long research on our 
part. It would delay your purchase considerably.” 


A DEFECT IN THE TITLE 


75 


“However, it seems to me the thing to do,” de- 
cided Mrs. Smith, and she and Stanley at once 
entered upon a discussion of the ways and means by 
which the hunt for Emily Leonard and her heirs was 
to be accomplished. It included the employment of 
detectives for the spring months, and then, if they 
had not met with success, a journey by Stanley during 
the weeks of his summer vacation. 

Dorothy and Ethel were bitterly disappointed at 
the result of Mrs. Smith’s attempt to purchase the 
coveted bit of land. 

“I suppose it wouldn’t have any value for any one 
else on earth,” cried Dorothy, “but I want it.” 

“I don’t think I ever saw a spot that suited me so 
well for a summer play place,” agreed Ethel Blue, 
and Helen and Roger and all the rest of the Club 
members were of the same opinion. 

“The Clarks will be putting the price up if they 
should find out that we wanted it so much,” warned 
Roger. 

“I don’t believe they would,” smiled Mrs. Smith. 
“They said they thought themselves lucky to have a 
customer for it, because it isn’t good for building 
ground.” 

“We’ll hope that Stanley will unearth the history 
of his great-aunt,” said Roger seriously. 

“And find that she died a spinster,” smiled his 
Aunt Louise. “The fewer heirs there are to deal 
with the simpler it will be.” 


CHAPTER VI 

WILD FLOWERS FOR HELEN’S GARDEN 

R oger had a fair crop of lettuce in one of his 
flats by the middle of March and transplanted 
the tiny, vivid green leaves to the hotbed without 
doing them any harm. The celery and tomato 
seeds that he had planted during the first week of 
the month were showing their heads bravely and the 
cabbage and cauliflower seedlings had gone to keep 
the lettuce company in the hotbed. On every warm 
day he opened the sashes and let the air circulate 
among the young plants. 

‘‘Wordsworth says 

‘It is my faith that every flower 
Enjoys the air it breathes/ 

and I suppose that’s true of vegetables, too,” laughed 
Roger. 

The girls, meanwhile, had been planting the seeds 
of Canterbury bells and foxgloves in flats. They did 
not put in many of them because they learned that 
they would not blossom until the second year. The 
flats they made from boxes that had held tomato 
cans. Roger sawed through the sides and they used 
the cover for the bottom of the second flat. 

The dahlias they provided with pots, joking at 
76 


FLOWERS FOR HELEN’S GARDEN 77 

the exclusiveness of this gorgeous flower which likes 
to have a separate house for each of its seeds. 
These were to be transferred to the garden about 
the middle of May together with the roots of last 
year’s dahlias which they were going to sprout in a 
box of sand for about a month before allowing them 
to renew their acquaintance with the flower bed. 

By the middle of April they had planted a variety 
of seeds and were watching the growth or awaiting 



the germination of gay cosmos, shy four o’clocks, 
brilliant marigolds, varied petunias and stocks, 
smoke-blue ageratums, old-fashioned pinks and sweet 
williams. Each was planted according to the in- 
structions of the seed catalogues, and the young 
horticulturists also read and followed the advice of 
the pamphlets on “Annual Flowering Plants” and 
“The Home Vegetable Garden” sent out by the De- 
partment of Agriculture at Washington to any one 
who asks for them. 

They were prudent about planting directly in the 
garden seeds which did not require forcing in the 
house, for they did not want them to be nipped, but 
they put them in the ground just as early as any 
of the seedsmen recommended, though they always 


78 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 

saved a part of their supply so that they might have 
enough for a second sowing if a frost should come. 

Certain flowers which they wished to have blos- 
som for a long time they sowed at intervals. Candy- 
tuft, for instance, they sowed first in April and they 
planned to make a second sowing in May and a 
third late in July so that they might see the pretty 
white border blossoms late in the autumn. Mignon- 
ette was a plant of which Mr. Emerson was as fond 
as Roger was of swcetpcas and the girls decided to 
give him a surprise by having such a succession of 
blooms that they might invite him to a picking bee 
as late as the end of October. Nasturtiums also, 
they planted with a liberal hand in nooks and cran- 
nies where the soil was so poor that they feared 
other plants would turn up their noses, and pansies, 
whose demure little faces were favorites with Mrs. 
Morton, they experimented with in various parts of 
the gardens and in the hotbed. 

The gardens at the Mortons’ and Smiths’ were 
long established so that there was not any special in- 
ducement to change the arrangement of the beds, 
except as the young people had planned way back in 
January for the enlargement of the drying green. 
The new garden, however, offered every opportunity. 
Each bed was laid out with especial reference to the 
crop that was to be put into it and the land was 
naturally so varied that there was the kind of soil 
and the right exposure for plants that required much 
moisture and for those that preferred a sandy soil, 
for the sun lovers and the shade lovers. 

The newly aroused interest in plants extended to 


FLOWERS FOR HELEN’S GARDEN 79 

the care of the house plants which heretofore had 
been the sole concern of Mrs. Emerson and Mrs. 
Morton. Now the girls begged the privilege of 
trimming off the dead leaves from the ivies and 
geraniums and of washing away with oil of lemon 
and a stiff brush the scale that sometimes came on 
the palms. They even learned to kill the little soft 
white creature called aphis by putting under the plant 
a pan of hot coals with tobacco thrown on them. 

“It certainly has a sufficiently horrid smell,” ex- 
claimed Ethel Brown. “I don’t wonder the beasties 
curl up and die ; I’d like to myself.” 

“They say aphis doesn’t come on a plant with 
healthy sap,” Ethel Blue contributed to this talk, “so 
the thing to do is to make these plants so healthy 
that the animals drop off starved.” 

“This new development is going to be a great com- 
fort to me if it keeps on,” Mrs. Emerson confessed 
to her daughter humorously. “I shall encourage 
the girls to use my plants for instruction whenever 
they want to.” 

“You may laugh at their sudden affection,” re- 
turned Mrs. Morton seriously, “but I’ve noticed that 
everything the U. S. C. sets its heart on doing gets 
done, and I’ve no doubt whatever that they’ll have 
what Roger calls *some’ garden this next summer.” 

“Roger has had long consultations with his grand- 
father about fertilizers and if he’s interested in the 
beginnings of a garden and not merely in the re- 
sults I think we can rely on him.” 

“They have all been absorbed in the subject for 
three months and now 


8o ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 


‘Lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone ; 

The flowers appear on the earth ; the time of the singing of 
birds is come.’ ” 

Roger maintained that his Aunt Louise’s house 
ought to be begun at the time that he planted his 
sweetpeas. 

“If I can get into the ground enough to plant, 
surely the cellar diggers ought to be able to do the 
same,” he insisted. 

March was not over when he succeeded in pre- 
paring a trench a foot deep all around the spot which 
was to be his vegetable garden except for a space 
about three feet wide which he left for an entrance. 
In the bottom he placed three inches of manure 
and over that two inches of good soil. In this he 
planted the seeds half an inch apart in two rows 
and covered them with soil to the depth of three 
inches, stamping it down hard. As the vines grew 
to the top of the trench he kept them warm with the 
rest of the earth that he had taken out, until the 
opening was entirely filled. 

The builder was not of Roger’s mind about the 
cellar digging, but he really did begin operations in 
April. Every day the Mortons and Smiths, singly 
or in squads, visited the site of Sweetbrier Lodge, 
as Mrs. Smith and Dorothy had decided to call the 
house. Dorothy had started a notebook in which 
to keep account of the progress of the new estate, 
but after the first entry — “Broke ground to-day” — 
matters seemed to advance so slowly that she had to 
fill in with memoranda concerning the growth of 
the garden. 


GARDENING ON PAPER 


65 


ground fine, mixed with mayonnaise and put on a 
crisp lettuce leaf between slices of whole wheat 
bread, Mrs. Smith sang the old English song to 
them. 

“Springe is yeomen in, 

Dappled lark singe; 

Snow mclteth, 

Runnell peltcth, 

Smelleth winde of newe buddinge. 

“Summer is yeomen in, 

Loude singe eueku; 

Groweth scede, 

Bloweth meade. 

And springeth the weede newe. 

“Autumne is yeomen in, 

Ceres fillcth home; 

Reaper swinketh, 

Farmer drinketh, 

Creaketh waine with newe corn. 

“Winter is yeomen in, 

With stormy sadde cheere; 

In the paddocke, 

Whistle ruddock, 

Brightc sparkc in the dead yeare.” 

“That’s a good stanza to end with,” said Ethel 
Blue, as she bade her aunt “Good-bye.” “We’ve 
been talking about gardens and plants and flowers all 
the afternoon, and it would have seemed queer to 
put on a heavy coat to go home in if you hadn’t said 
‘Winter is yeomen in.’ ” 

68 


CHAPTER V 


A DEFECT IN THE TITLE 

I N spite of their having made such an early start 
in talking about gardens the members of the 
United Service Club did not weary of the idea or 
cease to plan for what they were going to do. The 
only drawback that they found in gardening as a 
Club activity was that the gardens were for them- 
selves and their families and they did not see exactly 
how there was any “service” in them. 

“I’ll trust you youngsters to do some good work 
for somebody in connection with them,” asserted 
Grandfather Emerson one day when Roger had been 
talking over with him his pet plan for remodelling 
the old Emerson farmhouse into a place suitable for 
the summer shelter of poor women and children 
from the city who needed country air and relief from 
hunger and anxiety. 

“We aren’t rushing anything now,” Roger had 
explained, “because we boys are all going to graduate 
this June and we have our examinations to think 
about. They must come first with us. But later 
on we’ll be ready for work of some sort and we 
haven’t anything on the carpet except our gardens.” 

“There are many good works to be done with the 
help of a garden,” replied Mr. Emerson. “Ask 
66 


A DEFECT IN THE TITLE 67 

your grandmother to tell you how she has sent 
flowers into New York for the poor for many, many 
summers. There are people right here in Rosemont 
who haven’t enough ground to raise any vegetables 
on and they are glad to have fresh corn and Brussels 
sprouts sent to them. If you really do undertake 
this farmhouse scheme there’ll have to be a large 
vegetable garden planted near the house to supply 
it, and you can add a few flower beds. The old 
place will look better flower-dressed than empty, 
and perhaps some of the women and children will 
like to work in the garden.” 

Roger went home comforted, for he was very 
loyal to the Club and its work and he did not want 
to become so involved with other matters that he 
could not give himself to the purpose for which the 
Club was organized — helping others. 

As he passed the Miss Clarks he stopped to give 
their furnace its nightly shaking, for he was the 
accredited furnace -man for them and his Aunt Louise 
as well as for his mother. He added the money that 
he earned to the treasury of the Club so that there 
might always be enough there to do a kind act when- 
ever there should be a chance. 

As he labored with the shaker and the noise of 
his struggles was sent upward through the registers 
a voice called to him down the cellar stairs. 

“Ro-ger; Roger!” 

“Yes, ma’am,” replied Roger, wishing the old 
ladies would let him alone until he had finished his 
work. 

“Come up here, please, when you’ve done.” 


68 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 


“Very well,” he agreed, and went on with his 
racket. 

XVhen he went upstairs he found that the cause 
of his summons was the arrival of a young man who 
was apparently about the age of Edward Watkins, 
the doctor brother of Tom and Della. 

“My nephew is a law student,” said Miss Clark as 
she introduced the two young people, “and I want 
him to know all of our neighbors.” 

“My name is Stanley Clark,” said the newcomer, 
shaking hands cordially. “Pm going to be here for 
a long time so I hope I’ll see you often.” 

Roger liked him at once and thought his manner 
particularly pleasant in view of the fact that he was 
several years older. Roger was so accustomed to 
the companionship of Edward Watkins, who fre- 
quently joined the Club in their festivities and who 
often came to Rosemont to call on Miss Merriam, 
that the difference did not seem to him a cause of 
embarrassment. He was unusually easy for a boy 
of his age because he had always been accustomed to 
take his sailor father’s place at home in the enter- 
tainment of his mother’s guests. 

Young Clark, on his side, found his new acquaint- 
ance a boy worth talking to, and they got on well. 
He was studying at a law school in the city, it 
seemed, and commuted every day. 

“It’s a long ride,” he agreed when Roger sug- 
gested it, “but when I get home I have the good 
country air to breathe and I’d rather have that than 
town amusements just now when I’m working hard.” 

Roger spoke of Edward Watkins and Stanley was 


A DEFECT IN THE TITLE 69 

interested in the possibility of meeting him. Evi- 
dently his aiints had told him all about the Belgian 
baby and Miss Merriam, for he said Elisabeth 
would be the nearest approach to a soldier from a 
Belgian battlefield that he had seen. 

Roger left with the feeling that his new acquaint- 
ance would be a desirable addition to the neighbor- 
hood group and he was so pleased that he stopped in 
at his Aunt Louise’s not only to shake the furnace 
but to tell her about Stanley Clark. 



During the next month they all came to know him 
well and they liked his cheerfulness and his interest 
in what they were doing and planning. On Satur- 
days he helped Roger build a hot bed in the sunniest 
spot against the side of the kitchen ell. They found 
that the frost had not stiffened the ground after they 
managed to dig down a foot, so that the excavation 
was not as hard as they had expected. They dug a 
hole the size of two window sashes and four feet 
deep, lining the sides with some old bricks that they 
found in the cellar. At first they filled the entire 
bed with fresh stable manure and straw. After it 


70 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 

had stayed under the glass two days It was quite hot 
and they beat it down a foot and put on six inches of 
soil made one-half of compost and one-half of leaf 
mould that they found in a sheltered corner of the 
West Woods. 

“Grandfather didn’t believe we could manage to 
get good soil at this season even If we did succeed 
in digging the hole, but when I make up my mind to 
do a thing I like to succeed,” ' said Roger trium- 
phantly when they had fitted the sashes on to planks 
that sloped at the sides so that rain would run off 
the glass, and called the girls out to admire their 
result. 

“What are we going to put In here first?” asked 
Ethel Brown, who liked to get at the practical side 
of matters at once. 

“I’d like to have some violets,” said Ethel Blue. 
“Could I have a corner for them? I’ve had some 
plants promised me from the Glen Point greenhouse 
man. Margaret Is going to bring them over as soon 
as I’m ready for them.” 

“I want to see If I can beat Dicky with early vege- 
tables,” declared Roger. “I’m going to start early 
parsley and cabbage and lettuce, cauliflower and egg 
plants, radishes and peas and corn In shallow boxes 
— flats Grandfather says they’re called — in my room 
and the kitchen where It’s warm and sunny, and when 
they’ve sprouted three leaves I’ll set them out here 
and plant some more In the flats.” 

“Won’t transplanting them twice set them back?” 

“If you take up enough earth around them they 
ought not to know that they’ve taken a journey.” 


A DEFECT IN THE TITLE 


71 


“IVe done a lot of transplanting of wild plants 
from the woods,” said Stanley, “and I found that if 
I was careful to do that they didn’t even wilt.” 

“Why can’t we start some of the flower seeds here 
and have early blossoms?” 

“You can. I don’t see why we can’t keep it going 
all the time and have a constant supply of flowers 
and vegetables earlier than we should if w’e trusted 
to Mother Nature to do the work unaided.” 

“Then in the autumn we can stow away here some 
of the plants we want to save, geraniums and be- 
gonias, and plants that are pretty indoors, and take 
them into the house when the indoor ones become 
shabby.” 

“Evidently right in the heart of summer is the 
only time this article won’t be in use,” decided Stan- 
ley, laughing at their eagerness. “Have you got 
anything to cover it with when the spring sunshine 
grows too hot?” 

“There is an old hemp rug and some straw mat- 
ting in the attic — ^won’t they do?” 

“Perfectly. Lay them over the glass so that the 
delicate little plants won’t get burned. You can 
raise the sashes, too.” 

“If we don’t forget to close them before the sun 
sets and the night chill comes on, I suppose,” smiled 
Ethel Blue. “Mr. Emerson says that seeds under 
glass do better if they’re covered with newspaper 
until they start. 

It was about the middle of March when Mrs. 
Smith went in to call on her neighbors, the Miss 
Clarks, one evening. They were at home and after 


72 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 

a talk on the ever-absorbing theme of the war Mrs. 
Smith said, 

“I really came in here on business. I hope you’ve 
decided to sell me the meadow lot next to my knoll. 
If you’ve made up your minds hadn’t I better tell my 
lawyer to make out the papers at once?” 

“Sister and I made up our minds some time ago, 
dear Mrs. Smith, and we wrote to Brother William 
about it before he came to stay with us, and he was 
willing, and Stanley, here, who is the only other heir 
of the estate that we know about, has no objection.” 

“That gives me the greatest pleasure. I’ll tell my 
lawyer, then, to have the title looked up right away 
and make out the deed — though I feel as if I should 
apologize for looking up the title of land that has 
been in your family as long as Mr. Emerson’s has 
been in his.” 

“You needn’t feel at all apologetic,” broke in 
Stanley. “It’s never safe to buy property without 
having a clear title, and we aren’t sure that we are 
in a position to give you a clear title.” 

“That’s why we haven’t spoken to you about it 
before,” said the elder Miss Clark; “we were wait- 
ing to try to make it all straight before we said any- 
thing about it one way or the other.” 

“Not give me a clear title I” cried Mrs. Smith. 
“Do you mean that I won’t be able to buy it ? Why, 
I don’t know what Dorothy will do if we can’t get 
that bit with the brook; she has set her heart on 
it.” 

“We want you to have it not only for Dorothy’s 
sake but for our own. It isn’t a good building lot — 


A DEFECT IN THE TITLE 73 

It’s too damp — and we’re lucky to have an offer for 
it.” 

“Can you tell me just what the trouble is? It 
seems as if it ought to be straight since all of you 
heirs agree to the sale.” 

“The difficulty is,” said Stanley, “that we aren’t 
sure that we are all the heirs. We thought we were, 
but Uncle William made some inquiries on his way 
here, and he learned enough to disquiet him.” 

“Our father, John Clark, had a sister Judith,” 
explained the younger Miss Clark. “They lived 
here on the Clark estate which had belonged to the 
family for many generations. Then Judith married 
a man named Leonard — Peter Leonard — and went 
to Nebraska at a time when Nebraska was harder to 
reach than California is now. That was long before 
the Civil War and during those frontier days Aunt 
Judith and Uncle Peter evidently were tossed about 
to the limit of their endurance. Her letters came 
less and less often and they always told of some new 
grief — the death of a child or the loss of some piece 
of property. Finally the letters ceased altogether. 
I don’t understand why her family didn’t hold her 
more closely, but they lost sight of her entirely.” 

“Probably it was more her fault than theirs,” re- 
plied Mrs. Smith softly, recalling that there had been 
a time when her own pride had forbade her letting 
her people know that she was in dire distress. 

“It doesn’t make much difference to-day whose 
fault it was,” declared Stanley Clark cheerfully; “the 
part of the story that interests us is that the family 
thought that all Great-aunt Judith’s children were 


74 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 

dead. Here is where Uncle William got his sur- 
prise. When he was coming on from Arkansas he 
stopped over for a day at the town where Aunt 
Judith had posted her last letter to Grandfather, 
about sixty years ago. There he learned from the 
records that she was dead and all her children were 
dead — except one!^ 

“Except one!” repeated Mrs. Smith. “Bom 
after she ceased writing home?” 

“Exactly. Now this daughter — Emily was her 
name — ^left the town after her parents died and there 
is no way of finding out where she went. One or 
two of the old people remember that the Leonard 
girl left, but nothing more.” 

“She may be living now.” 

“Certainly she may; and she may have married 
and had a dozen children. You see, until we can 
find out something about this Emily we can’t give a 
clear title to the land.” 

Mrs. Smith nodded her understanding. 

“It’s lucky we’ve never been willing to sell any of 
the old estate,” said Mr. William Clark, who had 
entered and been listening to the story. “If we had 
we should, quite ignorantly, have given a defective 
title.” 

“Isn’t it possible, after making as long and 
thorough a search as you can, to take the case into 
court and have the judge declare the title you give to 
be valid, under the circumstances?” 

“That is done ; but you can see that such a decision 
would be granted only after long research on our 
part. It would delay your purchase considerably.” 


A DEFECT IN THE TITLE 


75 


“However, it seems to me the thing to do/’ de- 
cided Mrs. Smith, and she and Stanley at once 
entered upon a discussion of the ways and means by 
which the hunt for Emily Leonard and her heirs was 
to be accomplished. It included the employment of 
detectives for the spring months, and then, if they 
had not met with success, a journey by Stanley during 
the weeks of his summer vacation. 

Dorothy and Ethel were bitterly disappointed at 
the result of Mrs. Smith’s attempt to purchase the 
coveted bit of land. 

“I suppose it wouldn’t have any value for any one 
else on earth,” cried Dorothy, “but I want it.” 

“I don’t think I ever saw a spot that suited me so 
well for a summer play place,” agreed Ethel Blue, 
and Helen and Roger and all the rest of the Club 
members were of the same opinion. 

“The Clarks will be putting the price up if they 
should find out that we wanted it so much,” warned 
Roger. 

“I don’t believe they would,” smiled Mrs. Smith. 
“They said they thought themselves lucky to have a 
customer for it, because it isn’t good for building 
ground.” 

“We’ll hope that Stanley will unearth the history 
of his great-aunt,” said Roger seriously. 

“And find that she died a spinster,” smiled his 
Aunt Louise. “The fewer heirs there are to deal 
with the simpler it will be.” 


CHAPTER VI 


WILD FLOWERS FOR HELEN’S GARDEN 

R oger had a fair crop of lettuce in one of his 
flats by the middle of March and transplanted 
the tiny, vivid green leaves to the hotbed without 
doing them any harm. The celery and tomato 
seeds that he had planted during the first week of 
the month were showing their heads bravely and the 
cabbage and cauliflower seedlings had gone to keep 
the lettuce company in the hotbed. On every warm 
day he opened the sashes and let the air circulate 
among the young plants. 

“Wordsworth says 

‘It is my faith that every flower ^ 

Enjoys the air it breathes,’ 

and I suppose that’s true of vegetables, too,” laughed 
Roger. 

The girls, meanwhile, had been planting the seeds 
of Canterbury bells and foxgloves in flats. They did 
not put in many of them because they learned that 
they would not blossom until the second year. The 
flats they made from boxes that had held tomato 
cans. Roger sawed through the sides and they used 
the cover for the bottom of the second flat. 

The dahlias they provided with pots, joking at 
76 


FLOWERS FOR HELEN’S GARDEN 77 

the exclusiveness of this gorgeous flower which likes 
to have a separate house for each of its seeds. 
These were to be transferred to the garden about 
the middle of May together with the roots of last 
year’s dahlias which they were going to sprout in a 
box of sand for about a month before allowing them 
to renew their acquaintance with the flower bed. 

By the middle of April they had planted a variety 
of seeds and were watching the growth or awaiting 



the germination of gay cosmos, shy four o’clocks, 
brilliant marigolds, varied petunias and stocks, 
smoke-blue ageratums, old-fashioned pinks and sweet 
williams. Each was planted according to the in- 
structions of the seed catalogues, and the young 
horticulturists also read and followed the advice of 
the pamphlets on “Annual Flowering Plants” and 
“The Home Vegetable Garden” sent out by the De- 
partment of Agriculture at Washington to any one 
who asks for them. 

They were prudent about planting directly in the 
garden seeds which did not require forcing in the 
house, for they did not want them to be nipped, but 
they put them in the ground just as early as any 
of the seedsmen recommended, though they always 


78 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 

saved a part of their supply so that they might have 
enough for a second sowing if a frost should come. 

Certain flowers which they wished to have blos- 
som for a long time they sowed at intervals. Candy- 
tuft, for instance, they sowed first in April and they 
planned to make a second sowing in May and a 
third late in July so that they might see the pretty 
white border blossoms late in the autumn. Mignon- 
ette was a plant of which Mr. Emerson was as fond 
as Roger was of sweetpeas and the girls decided to 
give him a surprise by having such a succession of 
blooms that they might invite him to a picking bee 
as late as the end of October. Nasturtiums also, 
they planted with a liberal hand in nooks and cran- 
nies where the soil was so poor that they feared 
other plants would turn up their noses, and pansies, 
whose demure little faces were favorites with Mrs. 
Morton, they experimented with in various parts of 
the gardens and in the hotbed. 

The gardens at the Mortons’ and Smiths’ were 
long established so that there was not any special in- 
ducement to change the arrangement of the beds, 
except as the young people had planned way back in 
January for the enlargement of the drying green. 
The new garden, however, offered every opportunity. 
Each bed was laid out with especial reference to the 
crop that was to be put into it and the land was 
naturally so varied that there was the kind of soil 
and the right exposure for plants that required much 
moisture and for those that preferred a sandy soil, 
for the sun lovers and the shade lovers. 

The newly aroused interest in plants extended to 


FLOWERS FOR HELEN’S GARDEN 79 

the care of the house plants which heretofore had 
been the sole concern of Mrs. Emerson and Mrs. 
Morton. Now the girls begged the privilege of 
trimming off the dead leaves from the ivies and 
geraniums and of washing away with oil of lemon 
and a stiff brush the scale that sometimes came on 
the palms. They even learned to kill the little soft 
white creature called aphis by putting under the plant 
a pan of hot coals with tobacco thrown on them. 

“It certainly has a sufficiently horrid smell,” ex- 
claimed Ethel Brown. “I don’t wonder the beasties 
curl up and die ; I’d like to myself.” 

“They say aphis doesn’t come on a plant with 
healthy sap,” Ethel Blue contributed to this talk, “so 
the thing to do is to make these plants so healthy 
that the animals drop off starved.” 

“This new development is going to be a great com- 
fort to me if it keeps on,” Mrs. Emerson confessed 
to her daughter humorously. “I shall encourage 
the girls to use my plants for instruction whenever 
they want to.” 

“You may laugh at their sudden affection,” re- 
turned Mrs. Morton seriously, “but I’ve noticed that 
everything the U. S. C. sets its heart on doing gets 
done, and I’ve no doubt whatever that they’ll have 
what Roger calls ‘some’ garden this next summer.” 

“Roger has had long consultations with his grand- 
father about fertilizers and if he’s interested in the 
beginnings of a garden and not merely in the re- 
sults I think we can rely on him.” 

“They have all been absorbed in the subject for 
three months and now 


8o ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 


‘Lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone ; 

The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of 
birds is come.’ ” 

Roger maintained that his Aunt Louise’s house 
ought to be begun at the time that he planted his 
sweetpeas. 

“If I can get into the ground enough to plant, 
surely the cellar diggers ought to be able to do the 
same,” he insisted. 

March was not over when he succeeded in pre- 
paring a trench a foot deep all around the spot which 
was to be his vegetable garden except for a space 
about three feet wide which he left for an entrance. 
In the bottom he placed three inches of manure 
and over that two inches of good soil. In this he 
planted the seeds half an inch apart in two rows 
and covered them with soil to the depth of three 
inches, stamping it down hard. As the vines grew 
to the top of the trench he kept them warm with the 
rest of the earth that he had taken out, until the 
opening was entirely filled. 

The builder was not of Roger’s mind about the 
cellar digging, but he really did begin operations in 
April. Every day the Mortons and Smiths, singly 
or in squads, visited the site of Sweetbrier Lodge, 
as Mrs. Smith and Dorothy had decided to call the 
house. Dorothy had started a notebook in which 
to keep account of the progress of the new estate, 
but after the first entry — “Broke ground to-day” — 
matters seemed to advance so slowly that she had to 
fill in with memoranda concerning the growth of 
the garden. 


FLOWERS FOR HELEN’S GARDEN 8i 


Even before the house was started its position and 
that of the garage had been staked so that the garden 
might not encroach on them. Then the garden had 
been laid out with a great deal of care by the united 
efforts of the Club and Mr. Emerson and his farm 
superintendent. 

Often the Ethels and Dorothy extended their walk 
to the next field and to the woods and rocks at the 
back. The Clarks had learned nothing more about 
their Cousin Emily, although they had a man search- 
ing records and talking with the older people of a 
number of towns in Nebraska. He reported that he 
was of the opinion that either the child had died 
when young or that she had moved to a considerable 
distance from the town of her birth or that she had 
been adopted and had taken the name of her foster 
parents. At any rate consultation of records of mar- 
riages and deaths in several counties had revealed 
to him no Emily Leonard. 

The Clarks were quite as depressed by this out- 
come of the search as was Mrs. Smith, but they had 
instructed the detective to continue his investigation. 
Meanwhile they begged Dorothy and her cousins to 
enjoy the meadow and woods as much as they liked. 

The warm moist days of April tempted the girls 
to frequent searches for wild flowers. They found 
the lot a very gold mine of delight. There was so 
much variety of soil and of sunshine and of shadow 
that plants of many different tastes flourished where 
in the meadow across the road only a few kinds 
seemed to live. It was with a hearty shout they 
hailed the first violets. 

69 


82 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 


“Here they are, here they are !” cried Ethel Blue. 
“Aunt Marion said she was sure she saw some near 
the brook. She quoted some poetry about it — 

“ ‘Blue ran the flash across ; 

Violets were born !’ ” 

“That’s pretty; what’s the rest of it?” asked Ethel 
Brown, on her knees taking up some of the plants 
with her trowel and placing them in her basket so 
carefully that there was plenty of earth surrounding 
each one to serve as a nest when it should be put into 
Helen’s wild flower bed. 

“It’s about something good happening when every- 
thing seems very bad,” explained Ethel Blue. 
“Browning wrote it.” 

“Such a starved bank of moss 
Till, that May morn, 

Blue ran the flash across: 

Violets were born ! 

“Sky — what a scowl of cloud 
Till, near and far, 

Ray on ray split the shroud : 

Splendid, a star ! 

“World — how it walled about 
Life with disgrace 
Till God’s own smile came out: 

That was thy face!” 

“It’s always so, isn’t it !” approved Dorothy. 
“And the more we think about the silver lining to 
every cloud the more likely it is to show itself.” 


FLOWERS FOR HELEN’S GARDEN 83 

“What’s this delicate white stuff? And these tiny 
bluey eyes?” asked Ethel Blue, who was again stoop- 
ing over to examine the plants that enjoyed the moist 
positions near the stream. 

“The eyes are houstonia — Quaker ladies. We 
must have a clump of them. Saxifrage, Helen said 



Yellow Adder’s Tongue 


the Other was. She called my attention the other 
day to some they had at school to analyze. It has 
the same sort of stem that the hepatica has.” 

“I remember — a scape — only this isn’t so downy.” 

“They’re pretty, aren’t they? We must be sure 
to get a good sized patch; you can’t see them well 
enough when there is only a plant or two.” 

“Helen wants a regular village of every kind that 


84 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 

she transplants. She says she’d rather have a good 
many of a few kinds than a single plant of ever so 
many kinds.” 

“It will be prettier. What do you suppose this 
yellow bell-shaped flower is?” 

“It ought to be a lily, hanging its head like that.” 

“It is a lily,” corroborated Ethel Brown, “but it’s 
called ‘dog-tooth violet’ though it isn’t a violet at 
all.” 

“What a queer mistake. Hasn’t it any other 
name ?” 

“Adder’ s-tongue. That’s more suitable, isn’t it?” 

“Yes, except that I hate to have a lovely flower 
called by a snake’s name !” 

“Not all snakes are venomous; and, anyway, we 
ought to remember that every animal has some means 
of protecting himself and the snakes do it through 
their poison fangs.” 

“Or through their squeezing powers, like that big 
constrictor we saw at the Zoo.” 

“I suppose it is fair for them to have a defence,” 
admitted Ethel Blue, “but I don’t like them, just the 
same, and I wish this graceful flower had some other 
name.” 

“It has.” 

“O, that! ‘Dog-tooth’ is just about as ugly as 
‘adder’s tongue’ ! The botanists were in bad humor 
when they christened the poor little thing!” 

“Do you remember what Bryant says about ‘The 
Yellow Violet’?” asked Ethel Brown, who was al- 
ways committing verses to memory. 

“Tell us,” begged Ethel Blue, who was expending 


FLOWERS FOR HELEN’S GARDEN 85 

special care on digging up this contribution to the 
garden as if to make amends for the unkindness of 
the scientific world, and Ethel Brown repeated the 
poem beginning 

“When beechen buds begin to swell, 

And woods the blue-bird’s warble know, 

The yellow violet’s modest bell 

Peeps from last year’s leaves below.” 

Dorothy went into ecstasies over the discovery of 
two roots of white violets, but there seemed to be no 
others, though they all sought diligently for the 
fragrant blossoms among the leaves. 

A cry from Ethel Blue brought the others to a 
drier part of the field at a distance from the brook. 
There in a patch of soil that was almost sandy was a 
great patch of violets of palest hue, with deep 
orange eyes. They were larger than any of the 
other violets and their leaves were entirely different. 

“What funny leaves,” cried Dorothy. “They 
look as if some one had crumpled up a real violet 
leaf and cut it from the edge to the stem into a fine 
fringe.” 

“Turn It upside down and press it against the 
ground. Don’t you think it looks like a bird’s 
claw ?” 

“So It does! This must be a ‘bird-foot violet.’ ” 

“It Is, and there’s more meaning In the name than 
in the one the yellow bell suffers from. Do you sup- 
pose there are any violets up In the woods?” 

“They seem to fit in everywhere ; I shouldn’t be a 
bit surprised If there were some there.” 


86 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 


Sure enough, there were, smaller and darker in 
color than the flowers down by the brook and hid- 
ing more shyly under their shorter-stemmed 
leaves. 

“Helen is going to have some trouble to make her 
garden fit the tastes of all these different flow- 
ers,” said Ethel Brown 
thoughtfully. “I don’t 
see how she’s going to 
do it.” 

“Naturally it’s sort of 
half way ground,” re- 
plied Ethel Blue. “She 
can enrich the part that 
is to hold the ones that 
like rich food and put 
sand where these bird 
foot fellows are to go, 
and plant the wet-lovers 
at the end where the hy- 
drant is so that there’ll 
be a temptation to give 
them a sprinkle every 
time the hose is screwed 
on.” 

“The ground is always 
damp around the hydrant; I guess she’ll manage to 
please her new tenants.” 

“If only Mother can buy this piece of land,” said 
Dorothy, “I’m going to plant forget-me-nots and cow 
lilies and arum lilies right in the stream. There are 
flags and pickerel weed and cardinals here already. 



FLOWERS FOR HELEN’S GARDEN 87 

It will make a beautiful flower bed all the length of 
the field.” 

“I hope and hope every day that it will come out 
right,” sighed Ethel Blue. “Of course the Miss 
Clarks are lovely about it, but you can’t do things as 
if it were really yours.” 

Almost at the same instant both the Ethels gave 
a cry as each discovered a plant she had been look- 
ing for. 

“Mine is wild ginger. I’m almost sure,” exclaimed 
Ethel Brown. “Come and see, Dorothy.” 

“Has it a thick, leathery leaf that lies down almost 
flat?” asked Dorothy, running to see for herself, 

“Yes, and a blossom you hardly notice. It’s hid- 
den under the leaves and it’s only yellowish-green. 
You have to look hard for it.” 

“That must be wild ginger,” Dorothy decided. 
“What’s yours, Ethel Blue?” 

“I know' mine is hepatica. See the ‘hairy scape’ 
Helen talked about? And see what a lovely, lovely 
color the blossom is? Violet with a hint of pink?” 

“That would be the best of all for a border. The 
leaves stay green all winter and the blossoms come 
early in the spring and encourage you to think that 
after a while all the flowers are going to awaken.” 

“It’s a shame to take all this out of Dorothy’s 
lot.” 

“It may never be mine,” sighed Dorothy. “Still, 
perhaps we ought not to take too many roots; the 
Miss Clarks may not want all the flowers taken out 
of their woods.” 

“We’ll take some from here and some from 


88 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 


Grandfather’s woods,” decided Ethel Brown. 
“There are a few in the West Woods, too.” 

So they dug up but a comparatively small number 
of the hepaticas, nor did they take many of the 
columbines nodding from a cleft in the piled-up rocks. 

“I know that when we have our wild garden fully 
planted I’m not going to want to pick flowers just 
for the sake of picking them the way I used to,” 
confessed Ethel Blue. “Now I know something 
about them they seem so alive to me, sort of like 
people — I’m sure they won’t like to be taken travel- 
ling and forced to make a new home for them- 
selves.” 

“I know how you feel,” responded Dorothy 
slowly. “I feel as if those columbines were birds 
that had perched on those rocks just for a minute 
and were going to fly away, and I didn’t want to dis- 
turb them before they flitted.” 

They all stood gazing at the delicate, tossing blos- 
soms whose spurred tubes swung in every gentlest 
breeze. 

“It has a bird’s name, too,” added Dorothy as if 
there had been no silence; *^aquilegia — ^the eagle 
flower.” 

“Why eagle? The eagle is a strenuous old fowl,” 
commented Ethel Brown. “The name doesn’t seem 
appropriate.” 

“It’s because of the spurs — they suggest an eagle’s 
talons.” 

“That’s too far-fetched to suit me,” confessed 
Ethel Brown. 

“It is called ‘columbine’ because the spurs look a 


FLOWERS FOR HELEN’S GARDEN 89 

little like doves around a drinking fountain, and the 
Latin word for dove is ^columba/ said Dorothy. 

“It’s qu6er the way they name flowers after ani- 
mals — ” said Ethel Blue. 

“Or parts of animals,” laughed her cousin. 
“Saxifrage isn’t; Helen told me the name meant 
‘rock-breaker,’ because some kinds grow in the clefts 
of rocks the way the columbines do.” 

“I wish we could find a trillium,” said Ethel Blue. 
“The tri in that name means that everything about 
it is in threes.” 

“What is a trillium?” asked Ethel Brown. 

“Roger brought in a handful the other day. 
‘Wake-robin’ he called it.” 

“O, I remember them. There was a bare stalk 
with three leaves and the flower was under the 
leaves.” 

“There were three petals to the corolla and three 
sepals to the calyx. He had purple ones and white 
ones.” 

“Here’s a white one this very minute,” said Doro- 
thy, pouncing upon a plant eight or ten inches in 
height whose leaves looked eager and strong. 

“See,” she said as they all leaned over to examine 
it; “the blossom has two sets of leaves. The outer 
set is usually green or some color not so gay as to 
attract insects or birds that might destroy the flower 
when it is in bud. These outer leaves are called, all 
together, the calyx, and each one of them is called 
a sepal.” 

“The green thing on the back of a rose is the 
calyx and each of its leaflets is called a sepal,” said' 


90 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 

Ethel Brown by way of fixing the definition firmly in 
her mind. 

“The pretty part of the flower is the corolla which 
means ‘little crown,’ and each of its parts is called 
a petal.” 

“How did you learn all that?” demanded Ethel 
Brown admiringly. 

“Your grandmother told me the other day.” 

“You’ve got a good 
memory. Helen has told 
me a lot of botanical 
terms, but I forget 
them.” 

“I try hard to remem- 
ber everything I hear any 
one say about flowers or 
vegetables or planting 
now. You never can tell 
when it may be useful,” 
and Dorothy nodded 
wisely. 

“Shall we take up 
this wake-robin?” asked 
Ethel Blue. 

“Let’s not,” pleaded 
Ethel Brown. “We shall 
Wind Flower f^nd Others somewhere 

and there’s only one here.” 

They left it standing, but when they came upon a 
growth of wind-flowers there were so many of them 
that they did not hesitate to dig them freely. 

“I wonder why they’re called ‘wind-flowers’?” 



FLOWERS FOR HELEN’S GARDEN 91 

queried Ethel Brown, whose curiosity on the sub- 
ject of names had been aroused. 

“I know that answer,” replied Ethel Blue unex- 
pectedly. “That is, nobody knows the answer 
exactly; I know that much.” 

The other girls laughed. 

“What is the answer as far as anybody knows it?” 
demanded Dorothy. 

“The scientific name is ‘anemone.’ It comes from 
the Greek word meaning ‘wind.’ ” 

“That seems to be a perfectly good answer. 
Probably it was given because they dance around so 
prettily in the wind,” guessed Dorothy. 

“Helen’s botany says that it was christened that 
either because it grew in windy places or because it 
blossomed at the windy season.” 

“Dorothy’s explanation suits me best,” Ethel 
Brown decided. “I shall stick to that.” 

“I think it’s prettiest myself,” agreed Dorothy. 

“She’s so much in earnest she doesn’t realize that 
she’s deciding against famous botanists,” giggled 
Ethel Brown. 

“It is prettier — a lot prettier,” insisted Ethel Blue. 
“I’m glad I’ve a cousin who can beat scientists!” 

“What a glorious lot of finds I” cried Ethel Brown. 
“Just think of our getting all these in one after- 
noon I” 

“I don’t believe we could except in a place like 
this where any plant can have his taste suited with 
meadow or brookside or woods or rocks.” 

“And sunshine or shadow.” 

They were in a gay mood as they gathered up 


92 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 

their baskets and trowels and gently laid pieces of 
newspaper over the uprooted plants. 

“It isn’t hot to-day but we won’t run any risk of 
their getting a headache from the sun,” declared 
Dorothy. 

“These woodsy ones that aren’t accustomed to 
bright sunshine may be sensitive to it,” assented 
Ethel Blue. “We must remember to tell Helen in 
just what sort of spot we found each one so she can 
make its corner in the garden bed as nearly like it 
as possible.” 

“I’m going to march in and quote Shakespeare to 
her,” laughed Ethel Brown. “I’m going to say 

*I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, 

Where oxlip and the nodding violet grows,’ 

and then I’ll describe the ‘bank’ so she can copy it.” 

“If she doesn’t she may have to repeat Bryant’s 
‘Death of the Flowers’ : — 

‘The windflower and the violet, they perished long ago.’ ” 


CHAPTER VII 


COLOR SCHEMES 

‘‘T OOK out, Della; don’t pick that! Don^t 

X-y pick that, it’s poison ivy!” cried Ethel 
Brown as all the Club members were walking on the 
road towards Grandfather Emerson’s. A vine with 
handsome glossy leaves reached an inviting cluster 
toward passers-by. 

“Poison ivy!” repeated Della, springing back. 
“How do you know it is? I thought it was wood- 
bine — Virginia creeper.” 

“Virginia creeper has as many fingers as your 
hand; this ivy has only three leaflets. See, I-V-Y,” 
and Ethel Blue took a small stick and tapped a leaflet 
for each letter. 

“I must tell Grandfather this is here,” said Helen. 
“He tries to keep this road clear of It even if he finds 
it growing on land not his own. It’s too dangerous 
to be so close to the sidewalk.” 

“It’s a shame It behaves so badly when It’s so 
handsome.” 

“It’s not handsome if ‘handsome Is as handsome 
does’ Is true. But this is stunning when the leaves 
turn scarlet.” 

“It’s a mighty good plan to admire It from a 
distance,” decided Tom, who had been looking at it 
93 


94 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 

carefully. “Della and I being ‘city fellers/ weTe 
ignorant about it. I’ll remember not to touch the 
three-leaved I-V-Y, from now on.” 

The Club was intent on finishing their flower 
garden plans that afternoon. They had gathered 
together all the seedsmen’s catalogues that had been 
sent them and they had also accumulated a pile of 
garden magazines. They knew, however, that Mr. 
Emerson had some that they did not have, and they 
also wanted his help, so they had telephoned over to 
find out whether he was to be at home and whether 
he would help them with the laying out of their 
color beds. 

“Nothing I should like better,” he had answered 
cordially so now they were on the way to put him to 
the test. 

“We already have some of our color plants in our 
gardens left over from last year,” Helen explained, 
“and some of the others that we knew we’d want 
we’ve started in the hotbed, and we’ve sowed a few 
more in the open beds, but we want to make out a 
full list.” 

“Just what is your idea,” asked Mr. Emerson, 
while Grandmother Emerson saw that the dining 
table around which they were sitting had on it a 
plentiful supply of whole wheat bread sandwiches, 
the filling being dates and nuts chopped together. 

Helen explained their wish to have beds all of 
one color. 

“We girls are so crazy over pink that we’re going 
to try a pink bed at both of Dorothy’s gardens as 
well as in ours,” she laughed. 


COLOR SCHEMES 


95 


“You’d like a list of plants that will keep on 
blooming all summer so that you can always run out 
and get a bunch of pink blossoms, I suppose.” 

“That’s exactly what we want,” and they took 
their pencils to note down any suggestions that Mr. 
Emerson made. 

“We’ve decided on pink candytuft for the border 
and single pink hollyhocks for the background with 
foxgloves right ini front of them to cover up the 
stems at the bottom where they haven’t many leaves 
and a medium height phlox in front of that for the 
same reason.” 

“You should have pink morning glories and there’s 
a rambler rose, a pink one, that you ought to have 
in the southeast corner on your back fence,” sug- 
gested Mr. Emerson. “Stretch a strand or two of 
wire above the top and let the vine run along it. It 
blooms in June.” 

“Pink rambler,” they all wrote. “What’s its 
name?” 

“Dorothy—” 

“Smith?” 

“Perkins.” 

James went through a pantomime that registered 
severe disappointment. 

“Suppose we begin at the beginning,” suggested 
Mr. Emerson. “I believe we can make out a list 
that will keep your pink bed gay from May till 
frost.” 

“That’s what we want.” 

“You had some pink tulips last spring.” 

“We planted them in the autumn so that they’d 


96 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 

come out early this spring. By good luck they’re 
just where we’ve decided to have a pink bed.” 

“There’s your first flower, then. They’re near 
the front of the bed, I hope. The low plants ought 
to be in front, of course, so they won’t be hidden.” 

“They’re in front. So are the hyacinths.” 

“Are you sure they’re all pink?” 

“It’s a great piece of good fortune — Mother se- 
lected only pink bulbs and a few yellow ones to put 
back into the ground and gave the other colors to 
Grandmother.” 

“That helps you at the very start-off. There are 
two kinds of pinks that ought to be set near the front 
rank because they don’t grow very tall — the moss 
pink and the old-fashioned ‘grass pink.’ They are 
charming little fellows and keep up a tremendous 
blossoming all summer long.” 

“ ‘Grass pink,’ ” repeated Ethel Brown, “isn’t 
that the same as ‘spice pink’ ?” 

“That’s what your grandmother calls it. She 
says she has seen people going by on the road sniff to 
see what that delicious fragrance was. I suppose 
these small ones must be the original pinks that the 
seedsmen have burbanked into the big double ones.” 

“ ‘Burbanked’?” 

“That’s a new verb made out of the name of Lu- 
ther Burbank, the man who has raised such marvel- 
ous flowers in California and has turned the cactus 
into a food for cattle instead of a prickly nuisance.” 

“I’ve heard of him,” said Margaret. “ ‘Bur- 
banked’ means ‘changed into something superior,’ I 
suppose.” 


COLOR SCHEMES 97 

“Something like that. Did you tell me you had 
a peony?” 

“There’s a good, tall tree peony that weVe had 
moved to the new bed.” 

“At the back?” 

“Yes, indeed; it’s high enough to look over al- 
most everything else we are likely to have. It blos- 
soms early.” 

“To be a companion to the tulips and hyacinths.” 

“Have you started any peony seeds?” 

“The Reine Hortense. Grandmother advised 
that. They’re well up now.” 

“I’d plant a few seeds in your bed, too. If you 
can get a good stand of perennials — flowers that 
come up year after year of their own accord — it 
saves a lot of trouble.” 

“Those pinks are perennials, aren’t they? They 
come up year after year in Grandmother’s garden.” 

“Yes, they are, and so is the columbine. You 
ought to put that in.” 

“But it isn’t pink. We got some in the woods 
the other day. It is red,” objected Dorothy. 

“The columbine has been ‘burbanked.’ There’s 
a pink one among the cultivated kinds. They’re 
larger than the wild ones and very lovely.” 

“Mother has some. Hers are called the ‘Rose 
Queen,’ ” said Margaret. “There are yellow and 
blue ones, too.” 

“Your grandmother can give you some pink Can- 
terbury bells that will blossom this year. They’re 
biennials, you know.” 

“Does that mean they blossom every two years?” 

70 


98 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 

“Not exactly. It means that the ones you planted 
in your flats will only make wood and leaves this 
year and won’t put out any flowers until next year. 
That’s all these pink ones of your grandmother’s 
did last season; this summer they’re ready to go into 
your bed and be useful.” 

“Our seedlings are blue, anyway,” Ethel Blue re- 
minded the others. “They must be set in the blue 
bed.” 

“How about sweet williams?” asked Mr. Emer- 
son. “Don’t I remember some in your yard?” 

“Mother planted some last year,” answered 
Roger, “but they didn’t blossom.” 

“They will this year. They’re perennials, but it 
takes them one season to make up their minds to 
set to work. There’s an annual that you might sow 
now that will be blossoming in a few weeks. It 
won’t last over, though.” 

“Annuals die down at the end of the first season. 
I’m getting these terms straightened in my so-called 
mind,” laughed Dorothy. 

“You said you had a bleeding heart — ” 

“A fine old perennial,” exclaimed Ethel Brown, 
airing her new information. 

“ — and pink candy-tuft for the border and fox- 
gloves for the back; are those old plants or seed- 
lings?” 

“Both.” 

“Then you’re ready for anything! How about 
snapdragons ?” 

“I thought snapdragons were just common 
weeds,” commented James. 


COLOR SCHEMES 


99 


“They’ve been improved, too, and now they are 
large and very handsome and of various heights. 
If you have room enough you can have a lovely bed 
of tall ones at the back, with the half dwarf kind 
before it and the dwarf in front of all. It gives a 
sloping mass of bloom that is lovely, and if you nip 
off the top blossoms when the buds appear you can 
make them branch sidewise and become thick.” 

“We certainly haven’t space for that bank ar- 
rangement in our garden,” decided Roger, “but it 
will be worth trying in Dorothy’s new garden,” and 
he put down a “D” beside the note he had made. 

“The snapdragon sows itself so you’re likely to 
have it return of its own accord another year, so 
you must be sure to place it just where you’d like 
to have it always,” warned Mr. Emerson. 

“The petunia sows itself, too,” Margaret con- 
tributed to the general stock of knowledge. “You 
can get pretty, pale, pink petunias now, and they 
blossom at a great rate all summer.” 

“I know a plant we ought to try,” offered James. 
“It’s the plant they make Persian Insect Powder 
out of.” 

“The Persian daisy,” guessed Mr. Emerson. “It 
would be fun to try that.” 

“Wouldn’t it be easier to buy the insect powder?” 
asked practical Ethel Brown. 

“Very much,” laughed her grandfather, “but this 
is good fun because it doesn’t always blossom ‘true,’ 
and you never know whether you’ll get a pink or 
a deep rose color. Now, let me see,” continued 
Mr. Emerson thoughtfully, “you’ve arranged for 


100 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 


your hollyhocks and your phlox — those will be bloom- 
ing by the latter part of July, and I suppose you’ve 
put in several sowings of sweetpeas?” 

They all laughed, for Roger’s demand for sweet- 
peas had resulted in a huge amount of seeds being 
sown in all three of the gardens. 

“Where are we now?” continued Mr. Emerson. 

“Now there ought to be something that will come 
Into Its glory about the first of August,” answered 
Helen. 

“What do you say to poppies?” 

“Are there pink popples?” 

“O, beauties! Big bears, and little bears, and 
middle-sized bears; single and double, and every 
one of them a joy to look upon!” 

“Put down popples two or three times,” laughed 
Helen In answer to her grandfather’s enthusiasm. 

“And while we’re on the letter ‘P’ In the seed 
catalogue,” added Mr. Emerson, “order a few 
packages of single portulaca. There are delicate 
shades of pink now, and it’s a useful little plant to 
grow at the feet of tall ones that have no low- 
growing foliage and leave the ground bare.” 

“It would make a good border for us at some 
time.” 

“You might try it at Dorothy’s large garden. 
There’ll be space there to have many different kinds 
of borders.” 

“We’ll have to keep our eyes open for a pink 
lady’s slipper over in the damp part of the Clarks’ 
field,” said Roger. 


COLOR SCHEMES 


lOI 


“O, I speak for it for my wild garden,” cried 
Helen. 

“You ought to find one about the end of July, 
and as that is a long way off you can put off the 
decision as to where to place it when you transplant 
it,” observed their grandfather dryly. 

“Mother finds verbenas and ‘ten week stocks’ 
useful for cutting,” said Margaret. “They’re easy 
to grow and they last a long time and there are 
always blossoms on them for the house.” 

“Pink?” asked Ethel Blue, her pencil poised until 
she was assured. 

“A pretty shade of pink, both of them, and they’re 
low growing, so you can put them forward in the 
beds after you take out the bulbs that blossomed 
early.” 

“How are we going to know just when to plant 
all these things so they’ll come out when we want 
them to?” asked Della, whose city life had limited 
her gardening experience to a few summers at 
Chautauqua where they went so late in the season 
that their flower beds had been planted for them 
and were already blooming when they arrived. 

“Study your catalogues, my child,” James in- 
structed her. 

“But they don’t always tell,” objected Della, who 
had been looking over several. 

“That’s because the seedsmen sell to people all 
over the country — people living in all sorts of cli- 
mates and with all sorts of soils. The best way is 
to ask the seedsman where you buy your seeds to 


102 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 


indicate on the package or in a letter what the sow- 
ing time should be for our part of the world.” 

“Then we’ll bother Grandfather all we can,” 
threatened Ethel Brown seriously. “He’s given us 
this list in the order of their blossoming — ” 

“More or less,” interposed Mr. Emerson. 
“Some of them over-lap, of course. It’s roughly 
accurate, though.” 

“You can’t stick them in a week apart and have 
them blossom a week apart?” asked Della. 

“Not exactly. It takes some of them longer to 
germinate and make ready to bloom than it does 
others. But of course it’s true in a general way 
that the first to be planted are the first to bloom.” 

“We haven’t put in the late ones yet,” Ethel Blue 
reminded Mr. Emerson. 

“Asters, to begin with. I don’t see how there’ll 
be enough room in your small bed to make much of 
a show with asters. I should put some in, of course, 
in May, but there’s a big opportunity at the new 
garden to have a splendid exhibition of them. Some 
asters now are almost as large and as handsome as 
chrysanthemums — astermums, they call them — and 
the pink ones are especially lovely.” 

“Put a big ‘D’ against ‘asters,’ ” advised Roger. 
“That will mean that there must be a large number 
put into Dorothy’s new garden.” 

“The aster will begin to blossom in August and 
will continue until light frost and the chrysanthe- 
mums will begin a trifle later and will last a little 
longer unless there is a killing frost.” 

“Can we get blossoms on chrysanthemums the 


COLOR SCHEMES 


103 


first year?” asked Margaret, who had not found 
that true in her experience in her mother’s garden. 

“There are some new kinds that will blossom 
the first year, the seedsmen promise. I’d like to 
have you try some of them.” 

“Mother has two or three pink ones — ^well estab- 
lished plants — that she’s going to let us move to the 
pink bed,” said Helen. 

“The chrysanthemums will end your procession,” 
said Mr. Emerson, “but you mustn’t forget to put 
in some mallow. They are easy to grow and blos- 
som liberally toward the end of the season.” 

“Can we make candy marshmallows out of it?” 

“You can, but it would be like the Persian insect 
powder — it would be easier to buy it. But it has a 
handsome pink flower and you must surely have it 
on your list.” 

“I remember when Mother used to have the great- 
est trouble getting cosmos to blossom,” said Mar- 
garet. “The frost almost always caught it. Now 
there is a kind that comes before the frost.” 

“Cosmos is a delight at the end of the season,” 
remarked Mr. Emerson. “Almost all the autumn 
plants are stocky and sturdy, but cosmos is as grace- 
ful as a summer plant and as delicate as a spring 
blossom. You can wind up your floral year with 
asters and mallow and chrysanthemums and cosmos 
all blooming at once.” 

“Now for the blue beds,” said Tom, excusing 
himself for looking at his watch on the plea that 
he and Della had to go back to New York by a 
comparatively early train. 


104 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 

“If you’re in a hurry I’ll just give you a few 
suggestions,” said Mr. Emerson. “Really blue 
flowers are not numerous, I suppose you have no- 
ticed.” 

“We’ve decided on ageratum for the border and 
larkspur and monkshood for the back,” said Ethel 
Brown. 

“There are blue crocuses and hyacinths and 
‘baby’s breath’ for your earliest blossoms, and blue 
columbines as well as pink and yellow ones! and 
blue morning glories for your ‘climber,’ and blue 
bachelors’ buttons and Canterbury bells, and mourn- 
ing bride, and pretty blue lobelia for low growing 
plants and blue lupine for a taller growth. If you 
are willing to depart from real blue into violet you 
can have heliotrope and violets and asters and pan- 
sies and primroses and iris.” 

“The wild flag is fairly blue,” insisted Roger, 
who was familiar with the plants that edged the 
brook on his grandfather’s farm. 

“It is until you compare it with another moisture 
lover — forget-me-not.” 

“If Dorothy buys the Clarks’ field she can start 
a colony of flags and forget-me-nots in the stream,” 
suggested James. 

“Can you remember cineraria? There’s a blue 
variety of that, and one of salpiglossis, which is an 
exquisite flower in spite of its name.” 

“One of the sweetpea packages is marked ‘blue,’ ” 
said Roger, “I wonder if it will be a real blue?” 

“Some of them are pretty near it. Now this isn’t 
a bad list for a rather difficult color,” Mr. Emer- 


COLOR SCHEMES 


105 

son went on, looking over Ethel Blue’s paper, “but 
you can easily see that there isn’t the variety of the 
pink list and that the true blues are scarce.” 

“We’re going to try it, anyway,” returned Helen. 
“Perhaps we shall run across some others. Now 
I wrote down for the yellows, yellow crocuses first 
of all and yellow tulips.” 

“There are many yellow spring flowers and late 
summer brings goldenrod, so it seems as if the ex- 
tremes liked the color,” said Margaret observantly. 

“The intermediate season does, too,” returned 
Mr. Emerson. 

“Daffodils and jonquils are yellow and early 
enough to suit the most impatient,” remarked James. 

“Who wrote this,” asked Mr. Emerson, from 
whom Ethel Brown inherited her love of poetry: 

“I wandered lonely as a cloud 
That floats on high on vales and hills, 

When all at once I saw a crowd 
A host of golden daffodils ; 

Beside the lake, beneath the trees, 

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.” 

“Wordsworth,” cried Ethel Brown. 

“Wordsworth,” exclaimed Tom Watkins in the 
same breath. 

“That must mean that daffies grow wild in Eng- 
land,” remarked Dorothy. 

“They do, and we can have something of the 
same effect here if we plant them through a lawn. 
The bulbs must be put in like other bulbs, in the 
autumn. Crocuses may be treated in the same way. 


io6 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 


Then in the spring they come gleaming through the 
sod and fill everybody with Wordsworth’s delight.” 

“Here’s another competition between Helen’s 
wild garden and the color bed; which shall take the 
buttercups and cowslips?” 

“Let the wild bed have them,” urged Grand- 
father. “There will be plenty of others for the 
yellow bed.” 

“We want yellow honeysuckle climbing on the 
high wire,” declared Roger. 

“Assisted by yellow jessamine?” asked Margaret. 

“And canary bird vine,” contributed Ethel Blue. 

“And golden glow to cover the fence,” added 
Ethel Brown. 

“The California poppy is a gorgeous blossom for 
an edge,” said Ethel Blue, “and there are other kinds 
of poppies that are yellow.” 

“Don’t forget the yellow columbines,” Dorothy 
reminded them, “and the yellow snapdragons.” 

“There’s a yellow cockscomb as well as a red.” 

“And a yellow verbena.” 

“Being a doctor’s son I happen to remember that 
calendula, which takes the pain out of a cut finger 
most amazingly, has a yellow flower.” 

“Don’t forget stocks and marigolds.” 

“And black-eyed-Susans — rudbeckia — grow very 
large when they’re cultivated.” 

“That ought to go in the wild garden,” said 
Helen. 

“We’ll let you have it,” responded Roger gener- 
ously. “We can put the African daisy in the yel- 
low bed instead.” 


COLOR SCHEMES 


107 


“Calllopsis or coreopsis is one of the yellow plants 
that the Department of Agriculture Bulletin men- 
tions,” said Dorothy. “It tells you just how to 
plant it and we put in the seeds early on that ac- 
count.” 

“Gaillardia always reminds me of it a bit — the 
lemon color,” said Ethel Brown. 

“Only that’s stiffen If you want really, truly 
prim things try zinnias — old maids.” 



Rudbeckia — Black-eyed Susan 


“Zinnias come in a great variety of colors now,” 
reported Mr. Emerson. “A big bowl of zinnias is 
a handsome sight.” 

“We needn’t put any sunflowers into the yellow 
bed,” Dorothy reminded them, “because almost my 
whole back yard is going to be full of them.” 

“And you needn’t plant any special yellow nas- 
turtiums because Mother loves them and she has 
planted enough to give us flowers for the house, 
and flowers and leaves for salads and sandwiches, 
and seeds for pickle to use with mutton instead of 
capers.” 


io8 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 


“There’s one flower you must be sure to have 
plenty of even if you don’t make these colored beds 
complete,” urged Mr. Emerson; “that’s the ‘chalk- 
lover,’ gypsophila.” 

“What is it?” 

“The delicate, white blossom that your grand- 
mother always puts among cut flowers. It is feath- 
ery and softens and harmonizes the hues of all the 
rest. 

‘So warm with light his blended colors flow,’ 

in a bouquet when there’s gypsophila in it.” 

“But what a name!” ejaculated Roger. 


CHAPTER VIII 


CAVE LIFE 



HE dogwood was in blossom when the girls 


first established themselves in the cave in the 


Fitz-James woods. Mrs. Morton and Mrs. Smith 
thought it was rather too cool, but the girls invited 
them to come and have afternoon cocoa with them 
and proved to their satisfaction that the rocks were 
so sheltered by their position and by the trees that 
towered above them that it would take a sturdy wind 
to make them really uncomfortable. 

Their first duty had been to clean out the cave. 

“We can pretend that no one ever has lived here 
since the days when everybody lived in caves,” said 
Ethel Blue, who was always pretending something 
unusual. “We must be the first people to discover 


“I dare say we are,” replied Dorothy. 

“Uhuh,” murmured Ethel Brown, a sound which 
meant a negative reply. “Here’s an old tin can, 
so we aren’t the very first.” 

“It may have been brought here by a wolf,” sug- 
gested Ethel Blue. 

“Perhaps it was a werwolf,” suggested Dorothy. 

“What’s that?” 

“A man turned by magic into a wolf but keeping 
his human feelings. The more I think of it the 
more I’m sure that it was a werwolf that brought 


no ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 


the can here, because, having human feelings, he 
would know about cans and what they had in them, 
and being a wolf he would carry it to his lair or 
den or whatever they call ft, to devour it.” 

“Really, Dorothy, you make me uncomfortable I” 
exclaimed Ethel Blue. 

“That may be one down there in the field now,” 
continued Dorothy, enjoying her make-believe. 

The Ethels turned and gazed, each with an arm- 
ful of trash that she had brought out of the cave. 
There was, in truth, a figure down in the field be- 
side the brook, and he was leaning over and thrust- 
ing a stick into the ground and examining it closely 
when he drew it out. 

“That can’t be a werwolf,” remonstrated Ethel 
Brown. “That’s a man.” 

“Perhaps in the twentieth century wolves turn 
into men instead of men turning into wolves,” sug- 
gested Dorothy. “This may be a wolf with a man’s 
shape but keeping the feelings of a wolf, instead of 
the other way around.” 

“Don’t, Dorothy I” remonstrated Ethel Blue 
again. “He does look like a horrid sort of man, 
doesn’t he?” 

They all looked at him and wondered what he 
could be doing in the Miss Clarks’ field, but he did 
not come any nearer to them so they did not have a 
chance to find out whether he really was as horrid 
looking as Ethel Blue imagined. 

It was not a short task to make the cave as clean 
as the girls wanted it to be. The owner of the tin 
can had been an untidy person or else his occupation 


CAVE LIFE 


III 


of Fitz-James’s rocks had been so long ago that 
Nature had accumulated a great deal of rubbish. 
Whichever explanation was correct, there were many 
armfuls to be removed and then the interior of the 
cave had to be subjected to a thorough sweeping 
before the girls’ ideas of tidiness were satisfied. 
They had to carry all the rubbish away to some dis- 
tance, for it would not do to leave it near the cave 
to be an eyesore during the happy days that they 
meant to spend there. 

It was all done and Roger, who happened along, 
had made a bonfire for them and consumed all the 
undesirable stuff, before the two mothers appeared 
for the promised cocoa and the visit of inspection. 

The girls at once set about the task of converting 
them to a belief in the sheltered position of the cave 
and then they turned their attention to the prepara- 
tion of the feast. They had brought an alcohol 
stove that consisted of a small tripod which held a 
tin of solid alcohol and supported a saucepan. 
When packing up time came the tripod and the can 
fitted into the saucepan and the handles folded about 
it compactly. 

“We did think at first of having an old stove top 
that Roger saw thrown away at Grandfather’s,” 
Ethel Brown explained. “We could build two brick 
sides to hold it up and have the stone for a back 
and leave the front open and run a piece of stove 
pipe up through that crack in the rocks.” 

Mrs. Morton and Mrs. Smith, who were sitting 
on a convenient bit of rock just outside the cave, 
peered in as the description progressed. 


1 12 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 


“Then we could burn wood underneath and regu- 
late the draft by making a sort of blower with some 
piece of old sheet iron.” 

The mothers made no comment as Ethel Brown 
seemed not to have finished her account. 

“Then we thought that perhaps you’d let us have 
that old oil stove up in the attic. We could set it 
on this flat rock on this side of the cave.” 

“We thought there might be some danger about 
that because it isn’t very, very large in here, so we 
finally decided on this alcohol stove. It’s safe and 
it doesn’t take up any room and this solid alcohol 
doesn’t slop around and set your dress afire or your 
table cloth, and we can really cook a good many 
things on it and the rest we can cook in our own 
little kitchen and bring over here. If we cover 
them well they’ll still be warm when they get here.” 

“That’s a wise decision,” assented Mrs. Morton, 
nodding toward her sister-in-law. “I should be 
afraid that the stove top arrangement might be like 
the oil stove — the fuel might fall about and set fire 
to your frocks.” 

“And it would take up much more space in the 
cave,” suggested Mrs. Smith. “Here’s a contribu- 
tion to your equipment,” and she brought out a box 
of paper plates and cups, and another of paper nap- 
kins. 

“These are fine!” cried Ethel Blue. “They’ll 
save washing.” 

“Here’s our idea for furnishing. Do you want 
to hear it?” asked Dorothy. 

“Of course we do.” 


CAVE LIFE 


1 13 

“Do you see that flat oblong space there at the 
back? We’re going to fit a box in there. We’ll 
turn it on its side, put hinges and a padlock on the 
cover to make it into a door, and fix up shelves.” 

“I see,” nodded her mother and aunt. “That 
will be your store cupboard.” 

“And our sideboard and our linen closet, all in 
one. We’re going to make it when we go home 
this afternoon because we know now what the meas- 
urements are and we’ve got just the right box down 
in the cellar.” 

“Where do you get the water?” 

“Roger is cleaning out the spring now and mak- 
ing the basin under it a little larger, so we shall al- 
ways have fresh spring water.” 

“That’s good. I was going to warn you always 
to boil any water from the brook.” 

“We’ll remember.” 

The water for the cocoa was now bubbling in 
the saucepan. Ethel Blue took four spoonfuls of 
prepared cocoa, wet it with one spoonful of water 
and rubbed it smooth. Then she stirred it into a 
pint of the boiling water and when this had boiled 
up once she added a pint of milk. When the mix- 
ture boiled she took it off at once and served it in 
the paper cups that her aunt had brought. To go 
with it Ethel Brown had prepared almond biscuit. 
They were made by first blanching two ounces of 
almonds by pouring boiling water on them and then 
slipping off their brown overcoats. After they had 
been ground twice over in the meat chopper they 
were mixed with four tablespoonfuls of flour and 
71 


1 14 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 

one tablespoonful of sugar and moistened with a 
tablespoonful of milk. When they were thoroughly 
mixed and rolled thin they were cut into small 
rounds and baked in a quick oven for ten or fif- 
teen minutes. 

“These are delicious, my dear,” Mrs. Smith said, 
smiling at her nieces, and the Ethels were greatly 
pleased at their Aunt Louise’s praise. 

They sat about on the rocks and enjoyed their 
meal heartily. The birds were busy over their 
heads, the leaves were beginning to come thickly 
in the tree crowns and the chipmunks scampered 
busily about, seeming to be not at all frightened by 
the coming of these new visitors to their haunts. 
Dorothy tried to coax one to eat out of her hand. 
He was curious to try the food that she held out 
to him and his courage brought him almost within 
reach of her fingers before it failed and sent him 
scampering back to his hole, the stripes on his back 
looking like ribbons as he leaped to safety. 

Within a month the cave was in excellent work- 
ing order. The box proved to be a success just as 
the girls had planned it. They kept there such 
stores as they did not care to carry back and forth — 
sugar, salt and pepper, cocoa, crackers — and a sup- 
ply of eggs, cream-cheese and cookies and milk al- 
ways fresh. Sometimes when the family thermos 
bottle was not in use they brought the milk in that 
and at other times they brought it in an ordinary 
bottle and let it stand in the hollow below the spring. 
Glass fruit jars with screw tops preserved all that 
was entrusted to them free from injury by any ma- 


CAVE LIFE 


115 

rauding animals who might be tempted by the smell 
to break open the cupboard. These jars the girls 
placed on the top shelf; on the next they ranged 
their paper “linen” — which they used for napkins 
and then as fuel to start the bonfire in which they 
destroyed all the rubbish left over from their meal. 
This fire was always small, was made in one spot 
which Roger had prepared by encircling it with 
stones, and was invariably put out with a saucepan- 
ful of water from the brook. 

“It never pays to leave a fire without a good 
dousing,” he always insisted. “The rascally thing 
may be playing ’possum and blaze out later when 
there is no one here to attend to it.” 

A piece of board which could be moved about at 
will was used as a table when the weather was such 
as to make eating inside of the cave desirable. One 
end was placed on top of the cupboard and the other 
on a narrow ledge of stone that projected as if made 
for the purpose. One or two large stones and a 
box or two served as seats, but there was not room 
inside for all the members of the Club. When 
there was a general meeting some had to sit out- 
side. 

They added to their cooking utensils a few flat 
saucepans in which water would boil quickly and they 
made many experiments in cooking vegetables. 
Beans they gave up trying to cook after several ex- 
periments, because they took so long — from one to 
three hours — for both the dried and the fresh kinds, 
that the girls felt that they could not afford so much 
alcohol. They eliminated turnips, too, after they 


ii6 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 


had prodded a frequent fork into some obstinate 
roots for about three quarters of an hour. Beets 
were nearly as discouraging, but not quite, when 
they were young and tender, and the same was true 
of cabbage. 

“It’s only the infants that we can use in this 
affair,” declared Dorothy after she had replenished 
the saucepan from another in which she had been 
heating water for the purpose, over a second alcohol 
stove that her mother had lent them. Spinach, on- 
ions and parsnips were done in half an hour and 
potatoes in twenty-five minutes. 

They finally gave up trying to cook vegetables 
whole over this stove, for they concluded that not 
only was it necessary to have extremely young veg- 
etables but the size of the cooking utensils must of 
necessity be too small to have the proceedings a 
success. They learned one way, however, of get- 
ting ahead of the tiny saucepan and the small stove. 
That was by cutting the corn from the cob and by 
peeling the potatoes and slicing them very thin be- 
fore they dropped them into boiling water. Then 
they were manageable. 

“Miss Dawson, the domestic science teacher, says 
that the water you cook any starchy foods in must 
always be boiling like mad,” Ethel Blue explained to 
her aunt one day when she came out to see how mat- 
ters were going. “If it isn’t the starch is mushy. 
That’s why you mustn’t be impatient to put on rice 
and potatoes and cereals until the water is just 
bouncing.” 

“Almost all vegetables have some starch,” ex- 


CAVE LIFE 


117 

plained Mrs. Morton. “Water really boiling is 
your greatest friend. When you girls are old 
enough to drink tea you must remember that boil- 
ing water for tea is something more than putting on 
water in a saucepan or taking it out of a kettle on 
the stove.” 

“Isn’t boiling water boiling water?” asked Roger, 
wLo was listening. 

“There’s boiling water and boiling water,” 
smiled his mother. “Watei* for tea should be 
freshly drawn so that there are bubbles of air in 
it and it should be put over the fire at once. When 
you are waiting for it to boil you should scald your 
teapot so that its coldness may not chill the hot wa- 
ter when you come to the actual making of the 
tea.” 

“Do I seem to remember a rule about using one 
teaspoonful of tea for each person and one for the 
pot?” asked Tom. ^ 

“That is the rule for the cheaper grades of tea, 
but the better grades arc so strong that half a tea- 
spoonful for each drinker is enough.” 

“Then it’s just as cheap to get tea at a dollar a 
pound as the fifty cent quality.” 

“Exactly; and the taste is far better. Well, you 
have your teapot warm and your tea in it waiting, 
and the minute the water boils vigorously you pour 
it on the tea.” 

“What would happen if you let it boil a while?” 

“If you should taste water freshly boiled and 
water that has been boiling for ten minutes you’d 
notice a decided difference. One has a lively taste 


ii8 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 


and the other is flat These qualities are given to 
the pot of tea of course.” 

“That’s all news to me,” declared James. “I’m 
glad to know it.” 

“I used to think ‘tea and toast’ was the easiest 
thing in the world to prepare until Dorothy taught 
me how to make toast when she was fixing, invalid 
dishes for Grandfather after he was hurt in the fire 
at Chautauqua,” said Ethel Brown. “She opened 
my eyes,” and she nodded affectionately at her 
cousin. 

“There’s one thing we must learn to make or we 
won’t be true campers,” insisted Tom. 

“What is it? I’m game to make it or eat it,” 
responded Roger instantly. 

“Spider cakes.” 

“Spiders I Ugh!” ejaculated Della daintily. 

“Hush; a spider is a frying pan,” Ethel Brown 
instructed her. “Tell us how you do them, Tom,” 
she begged. 

“You use the kind of flour that is called ‘prepared 
flour.’ It rises without any fuss.” 

The Ethels laughed at this description, but they 
recognized the value in camp of a flour that doesn’t 
make any fuss. 

“Mix a pint of the flour with half a pint of milk. 
Let your spider get hot and then grease it with but- 
ter or cotton seed oil.” 

“Why not lard.” 

“Lard will do the deed, of course, but butter or 
a vegetable fat always seems to me cleaner,” pro- 
nounced Tom wisely. 


CAVE LIFE 


119 

“Won’t you listen to Thomas!” cried Roger. 
“How do you happen to know so much?” he in- 
quired amazedly. 

“I went camping for a whole month once and I 
watched the cook a lot and since then I’ve gathered 
ideas about the use of fat in cooking. As little frying 
as possible for me, thank you, and no lard in mine I” 

They smiled at his earnestness, but they all felt 
the same way, for the girls were learning to approve 
of delicacy in cooking the more they cooked. 

“Go ahead with your spider cake,” urged Mar- 
garet, who was writing down the receipt as Tom 
gave it. 

“When your buttered spider is ready you pour 
in half the mixture you have ready. Spread it 
smooth over the whole pan, put on a cover that 
you’ve heated, and let the cake cook four minutes. 
Turn it over and let the other side cook for four 
minutes. You ought to have seen our camp cook 
turn over his cakes; he tossed them into the air 
and he gave the pan such a twist with his wrist that 
the cake came down all turned over and ready to 
let the good work go on.” 

“What did he do with the other half of his bat- 
ter?” asked Ethel Brown, determined to know ex- 
actly what happened at every stage of proceedings. 

“When he had taken out the first cake and given 
it to us he put in the remainder and cooked it while 
we were attacking the first installment.” 

“Was it good?” 

“You bet!” 

“I don’t know whether we can do it with this tiny 


120 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 


fire, but let’s try — ^what do you say?” murmured 
Ethel Brown to Ethel Blue. 

“We ought to have trophies of our bow and 
spear,” Roger suggested when he was helping with 
the furnishing arrangements. 

“There aren’t any,” replied Ethel Brown briefly, 
“but Dicky has a glass bowl full of tadpoles; we 
can have those.” 

So the tadpoles came to live in the cave, carried 
out into the light whenever some one came and re- 
membered to do it, and as some one came almost 
every day, and as all the U. S. C. members were 
considerate of the needs and feelings of animals as 
well as of people, the tiny creatures did not suffer 
from their change of habitation. 

Dicky had taken the frogs’ eggs from the edge 
of a pool on his grandfather’s farm. They looked 
like black dots at first. Then they wriggled out of 
the jelly and took their place in the world as tad- 
poles. It was an unfailing delight to all the young 
people to look at them through a magnifying glass. 
They had apparently a round head with side gills 
through which they breathed, and a long tail. After 
a time tiny legs appeared under what might pass 
as the chin. Then the body grew longer and an- 
other pair of legs made their appearance. Finally 
the tail was absorbed and the tadpole’s transforma- 
tion into a frog was complete. All this did not take 
place for many months, however, but through the 
summer the Club watched the little wrigglers care- 
fully and thought that they could see a difference 
from week to week. 


CHAPTER IX 


“nothing but leaves” 

W HEN the leaves were well out on the trees 
Helen held an Observation Class one after- 
noon, in front of the cave. 

“How many members of this handsome and in- 
telligent Club know what leaves are for?” she in- 
quired. 

“As representing in a high degree both the qual- 
ities you mention, Madam President,” returned 
Tom, with a bow, “I take upon myself the duty of 
replying that perhaps you and Roger do because 
you’ve studied botany, and maybe Margaret and 
James do because they’ve had a garden, and it’s 
possible that the Ethels and Dorothy do inasmuch 
as they’ve had the great benefit of your acquaintance, 
but that Della and I don’t know the very first thing 
about leaves except that spinach and lettuce are 
good to eat.” 

“Take a good, full breath after that long sen- 
tence,” advised James. “Go ahead, Helen. I 
don’t know much about leaves except to recognize 
them when I see them.” 

“Do you know what they’re for?” demanded 
Helen, once again. 

“I can guess,” answered Margaret. “Doesn’t 
the plant breathe and eat through them?” 

I2I 


122 


ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 


“It does exactly that. It takes up food from wa- 
ter and from the soil by its roots and it gets food 
and water from the air by its leaves.” 

“Sort of a slender diet,” remarked Roger, who 
was blessed with a hearty appetite. 

“The leaves give it a lot of food. I was read- 
ing in a book on botany the other day that the elm 
tree in Cambridge, Massachusetts, under which 
Washington reviewed his army during the Revolu- 
tion was calculated to have about seven million 
leaves and that they gave it a surface of about five 

acres. That’s quite 
a surface to eat 
with!” 

“Some mouth I” 
commented Roger. 

“If each one of 
you will pick a leaf 
you’ll have in your 
hand an illustration 
of what I say,” sug- 
gested Helen. 

They all provided themselves with leaves, pick- 
ing them from the plants and shrubs and trees 
around them, except Ethel Blue, who already had 
a lily of the valley leaf with some flowers pinned 
to her blouse. 

“When a leaf has everything that belongs to it 
it has a little stalk of its own that is called a petiole; 
and at the foot of the petiole it has two tiny leaflets 
called stipules^ and it has what we usually speak of 
as ‘the leaf’ which is really the hlade/^ 



Lily of the Valley Leaf 


NOTHING BUT LEAVES” 


123 


They all noted these parts either on their own 
leaves or their neighbors’, for some of their speci- 
mens came from plants that had transformed their 
parts. 

“What is the blade of your leaf made of?” Helen 
asked Ethel Brown. 

“Green stuff with a sort of framework inside,” 
answered Ethel, scrutinizing the specimen in her 
hand. 

“What are the characteristics of the framework?” 

“It has big bones and little ones,” cried Della. 

“Good for Della I 
The big bones are 
called ribs and the 
fine ones are called 
veins. Now, will 
you please all hold 
up your leaves so 
we can all see each 
other’s. What is 
the difference in 
the veining between 
Ethel Brown’s oak leaf and Ethel Blue’s lily of the 
valley leaf?” 

After an instant’s inspection Ethel Blue said, 
“The ribs and veins on my leaf all run the same 
way, and in the oak leaf they run every which way.” 

“Right,” approved Helen again. “The lily of 
the valley leaf is parallel-veined and the oak leaf 
is net-veined. Can each one of you decide what 
your own leaf is?” 

“I have a blade of grass; it’s parallel veined,” 



Ethel Brown’s Oak Leaf 


124 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 

Roger determined. All the others had net veined 
specimens, but they remembered that iris and flag 
and corn and bear-grass — yucca — all were parallel. 

“Yours are nearly all netted because there are 
more net-veined leaves than the other kind,” Helen 
told them. “Now, there are two kinds of parallel 
veining and two kinds of net veining,” she went on. 
“All the parallel veins that you’ve spoken of are like 
Ethel Blue’s lily of the valley leaf — the ribs run 
from the stem to the tip — but there’s another kind 
of parallel veining that you see in the pickerel weed 
that’s growing down there in the brook; in that the 
veins run parallel from a strong midrib to the edge 
of the leaf.” 

James made a rush down to the brook and came 
back with a leaf of the pickerel weed and they handed 
it about and compared it with the lily of the valley 
leaf. 

“Look at Ethel Brown’s oak leaf,” Helen con- 
tinued. “Do you see it has a big midrib and the 
other veins run out from it ‘every which way’ as 
Ethel Blue said, making a net? Doesn’t it remind 
you of a feather?” 

They all agreed that it did, and they passed 
around Margaret’s hat which had a quill stuck in 
the band, and compared it with the oak leaf. 

“That kind of veining is called pinnate veining 
from a Latin word that means ‘feather,’ explained 
Helen. “The other kind of net veining is that of 
the maple leaf.” 

Tom and Dorothy both had maple leaves and 
they held them up for general observation. 


“NOTHING BUT LEAVES’ 


125 


“How is it different from the oak veining?” 
quizzed Helen. 

“The maple is a little like the palm of your hand 
with the fingers running out,” offered Ethel Brown. 

“That’s it exactly. There are several big ribs 
starting at the same 
place instead of one 
midrib. Then the 
netting connects all 
these spreading ribs. 

That is called pal- 
mate veining be- 
cause it’s like the 
palm of your hand.” 

“Or the web foot 
of a duck,” suggest- 
ed Dorothy. 

“I should think 
all the leaves that have a feather-shaped framework 
would be long and all the palm-shaped ones would 
be fat,” guessed Della. 

“They are, and they have been given names de- 
scriptive of their shape. The narrowest kind, with 
the same width all the way, is called linear/ ” 

“Because it’s a line — ^more or less,” cried James. 

“The next wider, has a point and is called Hance- 
shaped.* The *ohlong* is like the linear, the same 
size up and down, but it’s much wider than the linear. 
The ^elliptical* is what the oblong would be if its 
ends were prettily tapered off. The apple tree has 
a leaf whose ellipse is so wide that it is called ^ovaL* 
Can you guess what ^ ovate* is?” 



Tom and Dorothy both had Maple 
Leaves 


126 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 


“ ‘Egg-shaped’?” inquired Tom. 

“That’s it; larger at one end than the other, while 
a leaf that is almost round, is called WotundJ ” 

“Named after Della,” observed Della’s brother 
in a subdued voice that nevertheless caught his sis- 
ter’s ear and caused an oak twig to fly in his di- 
rection. 

“There’s a lance-shaped leaf that is sharp at the 
base instead of the point; that’s named ^oh-lanceo- 


vp 

Linear Lance-shaped Oblong Elliptical Ovate 

late\' and there’s one called ^spatulate^ that looks 
like the spatula that druggists mix things with.” 

“That ought to be rounded at the point and 
narrow at the base,” said the doctor’s son. 

“It is. The lower leaves of the common field 
daisy are examples. How do you think the botan- 
ists have named the shape that is like an egg up- 
side down?” 

“ ^Oh-ovate, if it’s like the other guessed 
Dorothy. 

“The leaflets that make up the horse-chestnut leaf 



NOTHING BUT LEAVES' 


n 


127 


are * wedge-shaped^ at the base,” Helen reminded 
them. 

“Then there are some leaves that have nothing 



Shield-shaped 
Rotund 
Crenatc Edge 



Oblancolate 



Spatulate 


remarkable about their tips but have bases that draw 
your attention. One is * he art-shaped ^ — like the lin- 
den leaf or the morning-glory. Another is ^kidney- 
shapedJ That one is wider than it is long.” 




“The hepatica is kidney-shaped,” remarked James. 
“The ^ear-shaped* base isn’t very common in this 
part of the world, but there’s a magnolia of that 


128 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 


form. The * arrow-shaped^ base you can find in th«r 
arrow-weed in the brook. The shape like the old- 
time weapon, the ^halberd* is seen in the common 
sorrel.” 

“That nice, acid-tasting leaf?” 

“Yes, that’s the one. What does the nasturtium 
leaf remind you of?” 

“Dicky always says that when the Jack-in-the-Pul- 
pit stops preaching he jumps on the back of a frog 
and takes a nasturtium leaf for a shield and hops 



forth to look for adventures,” said Roger, to whom 
Dicky confided many of his ideas when they were 
working together in the garden. 

“Dicky is just right,” laughed Helen. “That is a 

* shield-shaped^ leaf.” 

“Do the tips of the leaves have names?” 

“Yes. They are all descriptive — * pointed* 

* acute* ^obtuse/ truncate* ^notched* and so on,” an- 
swered Helen. “Did you notice a minute ago that I 
spoke of the ‘leaflet’ of a horse-chestnut leaf? 
What’s the difference between a ‘leaflet’ and a 
‘leaf’?” 



Some had to sit outside 


[See p. 115] 




NOTHING BUT LEAVES’ 


129 


“To judge by what you said, a leaflet must be a 
part of a leaf. One of the five fingers of the horse- 
chestnut leaf is a leaflet,” Della reasoned out in an- 
swer. 



Obtuse Truncated Notched 


“Can you think of any other leaves that have leaf- 
lets?” 

“A locust?” 

“A rose?” 



Pinnate 
Locust Leaf 


Pinnate, tendrils 
Sweet Pea Leaf 



“A swectpea?” 

The latter answer-question came from Roger and 
produced a laugh. 

“All those arc right. The leaves that are made up 

72 


130 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 

of leaflets are called ^compound* leaves, and the ones 
that aren’t compound are ^simple' ” 

“Most leaves are simple,” decided Ethel Brown. 

“There are more simple than compound,” agreed 
Helen. “As you recall them do you see any resem- 
blance between the shape of the horse-chestnut leaf 
and the shape of the rose leaf and anything else 
we’ve been talking about this afternoon?” 

“Helen is just naturally headed for the teaching 
profession!” exclaimed James in an undertone. 

Helen flushed. 

“I do seem to be asking about a million questions, 
don’t I ?” she responded good naturedly. 

“The rose leaf is feather-shaped and the horse- 
chestnut is palm-shaped,” Ethel Blue thought aloud, 
frowning delicately as she spoke. “They’re like 
those different kinds of veining.” 

“That’s it exactly,” commended her cousin. 
“Those leaves are ^pinnately compound^ and *paU 
mately compound^ according as their leaflets are ar- 
ranged like a feather or like the palm of your hand. 
When you begin to notice the edges of leaves you see 
that there is about every degree of cutting between 
the margin that is quite smooth and the margin that 
is so deeply cut that it is almost a compound leaf. It 
is never a real compound leaf, though, unless the 
leaflets are truly separate and all belong on one com- 
mon stalk.” 

“My lily of the valley leaf has a perfectly smooth 
edge,” said Ethel Blue. 

“That is called ^entire/ This elm leaf of mine 
has a ^serrate* edge with the teeth pointing forward 


NOTHING BUT LEAVES' 


like the teeth of a saw. When they point outward 
like the spines of a holly leaf they are ^dentate^- 
toothed. The border of a nasturtium leaf is ^cren- 
ate^ or scalloped. Most honeysuckles have a *wavy* 
margin. When there are sharp, deep notches such 
as there are on the upper leaves of the field daisy, 
the edge is called *cutJ 

“This oak leaf is ‘cut,’ then.” 

“When the cuts are as deep as those the leaf is 
^cleftJ When they go about half way to the mid- 



Dentate Wavy 

rib, as in the hepatica, ic is Hohed/ and when they al- 
most reach the midrib as they do in the poppy it is 
^parted/ ” 

“Which makes me think our ways must part if 
James and I are to get home in time for dinner,” 
said Margaret. 

“There’s our werwolf down in the field again,” ex- 
claimed Dorothy, peering through the bushes to- 
ward the meadow where a man was stooping and 
standing, examining what he took up from the 
ground. 

“Let’s go through the field and see what he’s do- 


132 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 

ing,” exclaimed Roger. “He’s been here so many 
times he must have some purpose.” 

But when they passed him he was merely looking 
at a flower through a small magnifying glass. He 
said “Good-afternoon” to them, and they saw as they 
looked back, that he kept on with his bending and ris- 
ing and examination. 

“He’s like us, students of botany,” laughed Ethel 
Blue. “We ought to have asked him to Helen’s 
class this afternoon.” 

“I don’t like his looks,” Dorothy decided. “He 
makes me uncomfortable. I wish he wouldn’t come 
here.” 

Roger turned back to take another look and shook 
his head thoughtfully. 

“Me neither,” he remarked concisely, and then 
added as if to take the thoughts of the girls off the 
subject, “Here’s a wild strawberry plant for your 
indoor strawberry bed, Ethel Brown,” and launched 
into the recitation of an anonymous poem he had re- 
cently found. 

“The moon is up, the moon, is up! 

The larks begin to fly, 

And, like a drowsy buttercup. 

Dark Phoebus skims the sky. 

The elephant with cheerful voice, 

Sings blithely on the spray ; 

The bats and beetles all rejoice, 

Then let me, too, be gay.’* 


CHAPTER X 


4 


THE U. S. C. AND THE COMMUNITY 

R OGER’S interest in gardening had extended far 
beyond fertilizers and sweetpeas. It was not 
long after the discussion in which the Mortons’ gar- 
den had been planned on paper that he happened to 
mention to the master of the high school, Mr. 
Wheeler, what the Club was intending to do. Mr. 
Wheeler had learned to value the enthusiasm and 
persistency of the U. S. C. members and it did not 
take him long to decide that he wanted their assist- 
ance in putting through a piece of work that would be 
both pleasant and profitable for the whole com- 
munity. 

“It seems queer that here in Rosemont where we 
are on the very edge of the country there should be 
any people who do not have gardens,” he said to 
Roger. 

“There are, though,” responded Roger. “I was 
walking down by the station the other day where 
those shanties are that the mill hands live in and I 
noticed that not one of them had space for more than 
a plant or two and they seemed to be so discouraged 
at the prospect that even the plant or two wasn’t 
there.” 

“Yet all the children that live in those houses go to 
our public schools. Now my idea is that we should 
133 


134 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 

have a community garden, planted and taken care of 
by the school children.” 

“Bully!” exclaimed Roger enthusiastically. 
“Where are you going to get your land?” 

“That’s the question. It ought to be somewhere 
near the graded school, and there isn’t any ploughed 
land about there. The only vacant land there is is 
that cheerful spot that used to be the dump.” 

“Isn’t that horrible! One corner of it is right 
behind the house where my aunt Louise lives. For- 
tunately there’s a thick hedge that shuts it off.” 

“Still it’s there, and I imagine she’d be glad enough 
to have it made into a pleasant sight instead of an 
eyesore.” 

“You mean that the dump might be made into the 
garden?” 

“If we can get people like Mrs. Smith who are 
personally affected by it, and others who have the 
benefit of the community at heart to contribute to- 
ward clearing off the ground and having it fertilized 
I believe that would be the right place.” 

“You can count on Aunt Louise, I know. She’d 
be glad to help. Anybody would. Why it would 
turn that terrible looking spot into almost a park!” 

“The children would prepare the gardens once the 
soil was put into something like fair condition, but 
the first work on that lot is too heavy even for the 
larger boys.” 

“They could pick up the rubbish on top.” 

“Yes, they could do that, and the town carts could 
carry it away and burn it. The town would give us 
the street sweepings all spring and summer and some 


U. S. C. AND THE COMMUNITY 135 

of the people who have stables would contribute fer- 
tilizer. Once that was turned under with the spade 
and topped off by some commercial fertilizer with a 
dash of lime to sweeten matters, the children could 
do the rest.” 

“What is your idea about having the children 
taught? Will the regular teachers do it?” 

“All the children have some nature study, and 
simple gardening can be run into that, our superin- 
tendent tells me. Then I know something about 
gardening and I’ll gladly give some time to the out- 
door work.” 

“I’d like to help, too,” said Roger unassumingly, 
“if you think I know enough.” 

“If you’re going to have a share in planting and 
working three gardens I don’t see why you can’t keep 
sufficiently ahead of the children to be able to show 
them what to do. We’d be glad to have your help,” 
and Mr. Wheeler shook hands cordially with' his new 
assistant. 

Roger was not the only member of his family in- 
terested in the new plan. His Grandfather was pub- 
lic-spirited and at a meeting of citizens called for the 
purpose of proposing the new community venture he 
offered money, fertilizer, seeds, and the services of 
a man for two days to help in the first clearing up. 
Others followed his example, one citizen giving a 
liberal sum of money toward the establishment of an 
incinerator which should replace in part the duties of 
the dump, and another heading a subscription list for 
the purchase of a fence which should keep out stray 
animals and boys whose interests might be awakened 


136 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 

at the time the vegetables ripened rather than during 
the days of preparation and backache. Mrs. Smith 
answered her nephew’s expectations by adding to the 
fund. The town contributed the lot, and supported 
the new work generously in more than one way. 

When it came to the carrying out of details Mr. 
Wheeler made further demands upon the Club. He 
asked the boys to give some of their Saturday time to 
spreading the news of the proposed garden among 
the people who might contribute and also the people 
who might want to have their children benefit by tak- 
ing the new “course of study.” Although James 
and Tom did not live in Rosemont they were glad to 
help and for several Saturdays the Club tramps were 
utilized as a means of spreading the good news 
through the outskirts of the town. 

The girls were placed among the workers when 
the day came to register the names of the children 
who wanted to undertake the plots. There were so 
many of them that there was plenty to do for both 
the Ethels and for Dorothy and Helen, who assisted 
Mr. Wheeler. The registration was based on the 
catalogue plan. For each child there was a card, 
and on it the girls wrote his name and address, his 
grade in school and a number corresponding to the 
number of one of the plots into which the big field 
was divided. It did not take him long to understand 
that on the day when the garden was to open he was 
to hunt up his plot and that after that he and his 
partner were to be responsible for everything that 
happened to it. 

Two boys or two girls were assigned to each plot 


U. S. C. AND THE COMMUNITY 137 

but more children applied than there were plots to 
distribute. The Ethels were disturbed about this at 
first for it seemed a shame that any one who wanted 
to make a garden should not have the opportunity. 
Helen reminded them, however, that there might be 
some who would find their interest grow faint when 
the days grew hot and long and the weeds seemed to 
wax tall at a faster rate than did the desirable plants. 

“When some of these youngsters fall by the way- 
side we can supply their places from the waiting list,” 
she said. 

“There won’t be so many fall by the wayside 
if there is a waiting list,” prophesied her Aunt 
Louise who had come over to the edge of the ground 
to see how popular the new scheme proved to be. 
“It’s human nature to want to stick If you think that 
some one else Is waiting to take your place.” 

The beds were sixteen feet long and five feet wide 
and a path ran all around. This permitted every 
part of the bed to be reached by hand, and did away 
with the necessity of stepping on it. It was decreed 
that all the plots were to be edged with flowers, but 
the workers might decide for themselves what they 
should be. The planters of the first ten per cent, of 
the beds that showed seedlings were rewarded by 
being allowed the privilege of planting the vines and 
tall blossoming plants that were to cover the inside 
of the fence. 

Most of the plots were given over to vegetables, 
even those cared for by small children, for the addi- 
tion of a few extras to the family table was more to 
be desired than the bringing home of a bunch of 


138 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 

flowers, but even the most provident children had the 
pleasure of picking the white candytuft or blue ager- 
atum, or red and yellow dwarf nasturtiums that 
formed the borders. 

Once a week each plot received a visit from some 
one qualified to instruct the young farmer and the 
condition of the plot was indicated on his card. 
Here, too, and on the duplicate card which was filed 
in the schoolhouse, the child’s attendance record was 
kept, and also the amount of seed he used and the 
extent of the crop he harvested. In this way the 
cost of each of the little patches was figured quite 
closely. As it turned out, some of the children who 
were not blessed with many brothers and sisters, sold 
a good many dimes’ worth of vegetables in the course 
of the summer. 

“This surely is a happy sight!” exclaimed Mr. 
Emerson to his wife as he passed one day and stopped 
to watch the children at work, some, just arrived, get- 
ting their tools from the toolhouse in one comer of 
the lot, others already hard at work, some hoeing, 
some on their knees weeding, all as contented as they 
were busy. 

“Come in, come in,” urged Mr. Wheeler, who no- 
ticed them looking over the fence. “Come in and see 
how your grandson’s pupils are progressing.” 

The Emersons were eager to accept the invitation. 

“Here is the plan we’ve used in laying out the 
beds,” explained Mr. Wheeler, showing them a copy 
of a Bulletin issued by the Department of Agricul- 
ture. “Roger and I studied over it a long time and 
we came to the conclusion that we couldn’t better this. 


U. S. C. AND THE COMMUNITY 139 

This one is all vegetables, you see, and that has been 
chosen by most of the youngsters. Some of the girls. 



^ ■ r, S’'Q/ocu t 
trt 'toei^ 



ll( 

HcuZiAhy 

b 

Jtce^ii^h 

J^ettuce 

ll 

6^ ct/t>fzrG 
Aou^ 


JjeMuce/ 

d 

j:e^n^€f 

•1 

J^ecen^. €in. apru /r 

S "cc/^a/i/- 
JD€4ZJt^ 2 >*. 


j9e4:f.rv6. 


jSecLTiA 

w 



S € ( 6 ^- "'iipinj'G'uA 'foto. 

N 

Seccn6, 


:Seei^. 

'S'f' 



Jbeeli 




.8 '"CLpCtA/~ 
yn^Aocc*'. 


S ** Qjoctr/~ 
CrjjToifa. iff. 


/';a/3ar/- 

TotMarwofdA. aou> 




s 

To^MctriqoldA 






i8'*Ci/}€trC 


^Pa^TUTrt-UM. /_/t 7-ncr^. 



Te6uni€o 







ThlOiC.yf‘'ciA3a.f{ 


CT'omn/ceA 


^ ct/jccu^- 

V€J’0^i)1rt>J tTT. ' 




CQrtc/^^'f/~ ^ 




'SJu'J^.cZclccc ^ 


Plan of a vegetable school gar- Plan of a combined vegetable 
den and flower school garden 


though, wanted more flowers, so they have followed 
this one.” 

“This vegetable arrangement is the one I’ve fol- 
lowed at home,” said Roger, “only mine is larger. 
Dicky’s garden is just this size.” 



140 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 

“Would there be any objection to my offering a 
small prize?” asked Mr. Emerson. 

“None at all.” 

“Then I’d like to give some packages of seeds — 
as many as you think would be suitable — to the 
partners who make the most progress in the first 
month.” 

“And I’d like to give a bundle of flower seeds to 
the border that is In the most flourishing condition by 
the first of August,” added Mrs. Emerson. 

“And the United Service Club would like to give 
some seeds for the earliest crop of vegetables har- 
vested from any plot,” promised Roger, taking upon 
himself the responsibility of the offer which he was 
sure the other members would confirm. 

Mr. Wheeler thanked them all and assured them 
that notice of the prizes would be given at once so 
that the competition might add to the present en- 
thusiasm. 

“Though it would be hard to do that,” he con- 
cluded, smiling with satisfaction. 

“No fair planting corn in the kitchen and trans- 
planting it the way I’m doing at home,” decreed 
Roger, enlarging his stipulations concerning the Club 
offer. 

“I understand; the crop must be raised here from 
start to finish,” replied Mr. Wheeler. 

The interest of the children in the garden and of 
their parents and the promoters in general in the 
improvement that they had made in the old town 
dump was so great that the Ethels were inspired with 
an idea that would accomplish even more desirable 


U. S. C. AND THE COMMUNITY 141 

changes. The suggestion was given at one of the 
Saturday meetings of the Club. 

“You know how horrid the grounds around the 
railroad station are,” Ethel Blue reminded them. 

“There’s some grass,” objected Roger. 

“A tiny patch, and right across the road there are 
ugly weeds. I think that if we put it up to the 
people of Rosemont right now they’d be willing to do 
something about making the town prettier by plant- 
ing in a lot of conspicuous places.” 

“Where besides the railroad station?” inquired 
Helen. 

“Can you ask? Think of the Town Hall! 
There isn’t a shrub within a half mile.” 

“And the steps of the high school,” added Ethel 
Brown. “You go over them every day for ten 
months, so you’re so accustomed to them that you 
don’t see that they’re as ugly as ugly. They ought to 
have bushes planted at each side to bank them from 
sight.” 

“I dare say you’re right,” confessed Helen, while 
Roger nodded assent and murmured something about 
Japan ivy. 

“Some sort of vine at all the corners would be 
splendid,” insisted Ethel Brown. “Ethel Blue and 
Dorothy and I planted Virginia Creeper and Japan 
ivy and clematis wherever we could against the 
graded school building; didn’t we tell you? The 
principal said we might; he took the responsibility 
and we provided the plants and did the plant- 
ing.” 

“He said he wished we could have some rhodo- 


142 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 

dendrons and mountain laurel for the north side of 
the building, and some evergreen azalea bushes, but 
he didn’t know where we’d get them, because he had 
asked the committee for them once and they had said 
that they were spending all their money on the inside 
of the children’s heads and that the outside of the 
building would have to look after itself.” 

“That’s just the spirit the city fathers have been 
showing about the park. They’ve actually got that 
started, though,” said Roger gratefully. 

“They’re doing hardly any work on it; I went by 
there yesterday,” reported Dorothy. “It’s all laid 
out, and I suppose they’ve planted grass seed for 
there are places that look as if they might be lawns 
in the dim future.” 

“Too bad they couldn’t afford to sod them,” re- 
marked James, wisely. 

“If they’d set out clumps of shrubs at the corners 
and perhaps put a carpet of pansies under them it 
would help,” declared Ethel Blue, who had consulted 
with the Glen Point nurseryman one afternoon when 
the Club went there to see Margaret and James. 

“Why don’t we make a roar about it?” demanded 
Roger. “Ethel Blue had the right idea when she 
said that now was the time to take advantage of the 
citizens’ interest. If we could in some way call their 
attention to the high school and the Town Hall and 
the railroad station and the park.” 

“And tell them that the planting at the graded 
school as far as it goes, was done by three little girls,” 
suggested Tom, grinning at the disgusted faces with 
which the Ethels and Dorothy heard themselves 


U. S. C. AND THE COMMUNITY 


143 


called “little girls”; “that ought to put them to 
shame.” 

“Isn’t the easiest way to call their attention to it 
to have a piece in the paper?” asked Ethel Brown. 

“You’ve hit the right idea,” approved James. “If 
your editor is like the Glen Point editor he’ll be glad 
of a new crusade to undertake.” 

“Particularly if it’s backed by your grandfather,” 
added Della shrewdly. 

The result of this conference of the Club was that 
they laid the whole matter before Mr. Emerson and 
found that it was no trouble at all to enlist his in- 
terest. 

“If you’re interested right off why won’t other 
people be?” asked Ethel Brown when it was clear 
that her grandfather would lend his weight to any- 
thing they undertook. 

“I believe they will be, and I think you have the 
right idea about making a beginning. Go to Mr. 
Montgomery, the editor of the Rosemont Star^ and 
say that I sent you to lay before him the needs of 
this community in the way of added beauty. Tell 
him to ‘play it up’ so that the Board of Trade will 
get the notion through their heads that people will be 
attracted to live here if they see lovely grounds about 
them. He’ll think of other appeals. Go to see 
him.” 

The U. S. C. never let grass grow under its feet. 
The Ethels and Dorothy, Roger and Helen went to 
the office of the Star that very afternoon. 

“You seem to be a delegation,” said the editor, re- 
ceiving them with a smile. 


144 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 

“We represent our families, who are citizens of 
Rosemont,” answered Roger, “and who want your 
help, and we also represent the United Service Club 
which is ready to help you help them.” 

“I know you I” responded Mr. Montgomery geni- 
ally. “Your club is well named. You’ve already 
done several useful things for Rosemont people and 
institutions. What is it now ?” 

Roger told him to the last detail, even quoting 
Tom’s remark about the “three little girls,” and add- 
ing some suggestions about town prizes for front door 
yards which the Ethels had poured into his ears as 
they came up the stairs. While he was talking the 
editor made some notes on a pad lying on his desk. 
The Ethels were afraid that that meant that he was 
not paying much attention, and they glanced at each 
other with growing disappointment. When Roger 
stopped, however, Mr. Montgomery nodded gravely. 

“I shall be very glad indeed to lend the weight of 
the Star toward the carrying out of your proposi- 
tion,” he remarked, seeming not to notice the bounce 
of delight that the younger girls could not resist. 
“What would you think of a series of editorials, 
each striking a different note?” and he reao from his 
pad; — Survey of Rosemont; Effect of Appeal ance of 
Railroad Station, Town Hall, etc., on Strangers; 
Value of Beauty as a Reinforcement to Good Roads 
and Good Schools. “That is, as an extra attraction 
for drawing new residents,” he explained. “We 
have good roads and good schools, but I can conceive 
of people who might say that they would have to be 
a lot better than they arc before they’d live in a town 


U. S. C. AND THE COMMUNITY 145 

where the citizens had no more idea of the fitness of 
things than to have a dump heap almost in the heart 
of the town and to let the Town Hall look like a 
jail.” 

The listening party nodded their agreement with 
the force of this argument. 

“ ‘What Three Little Girls Have Done/ ” read 
Mr. Montgomery. “I’ll invite any one who is in- 
terested to take a look at the graded schoolhouse and 
see how much better it looks as a result of what has 
been accomplished there. I know, because I live 
right opposite it, and I’m much obliged to you young 
ladies.” 

He bowed so affably in the direction of the Ethels 
and Dorothy, and “young ladies” sounded so pleas- 
antly in their ears that they were disposed to forgive 
him for the “little girls” of his title. 

“I have several other topics here,” he went on, 
“some appealing to our citizens’ love of beauty 
and some to their notions of commercial values. If 
we keep this thing up every day for a week and mean- 
while work up sentiment, I shouldn’t wonder if we 
had some one calling a public meeting at the end of 
the week. If no one else does I’ll do it myself,” he 
added amusedly. 

“What can we do?” asked Ethel Brown, who al- 
ways went straight to the practical side. 

“Stir up sentiment. You stirred your grand- 
father; stir all your neighbors; talk to all your school- 
mates and get them to talk at home about the things 
you tell them. I’ll send a reporter to write up a 
little ‘story’ about the U. S. C. with a twist on the 
73 


146 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 

end that the grown-ups ought not to leave a matter 
like this for youngsters to handle, no matter how well 
they would do it.” 

“But we’d like to handle it,” stammered Ethel 
Blue. 

“You’ll have a chance; you needn’t be afraid of 
that. The willing horse may always pull to the full 
extent of his strength. But the citizens of Rose- 
mont ought not to let a public matter like this be 
financed by a few kids,” and Mr. Montgomery tossed 
his notebook on his desk with a force that hinted that 
he had had previous encounters with an obstinate 
element in his chosen abiding place. 

The scheme that he had outlined was followed out 
to the letter, with additions made as they occurred 
to the ingenious minds of the editor or of his clever 
young reporters who took an immense delight in run- 
ning under the guise of news items, bits of reminder, 
gentle gibes at slowness, bland comments on igno- 
rance of the commercial value of beauty, mild jokes 
at letting children do men’s work. It was all so 
good-natured that no one took offence, and at the 
same time no one who read the Star had the oppor- 
tunity to forget that seed had been sown. 

It germinated even more promptly than Mr. 
Montgomery had prophesied. He knew that Mr. 
Emerson stood ready to call a mass meeting at any 
moment that he should tell him that the time was 
ripe, but both he and Mr. Emerson thought that the 
call might be more effective if it came from a person 
who really had been converted by the articles in 
the paper. This person came to the front but five 


U. S. C. AND THE COMMUNITY 147 

days after the appearance of the first editorial in 
the surprising person of the alderman who had 
been foremost in opposing the laying out of the 
park. 

“You may think me a weathercock,” he said rather 
sheepishly to Mr. Montgomery, “but when I make 
up my mind that a thing is desirable I put my whole 
strength into putting it through. When I finally 
gave my vote for the park I was really converted to 
the park project and I tell you I’ve been just frothing 
because the other aldermen have been so slow about 
putting it in order. I haven’t been able to get them 
to appropriate half enough for it.” 

Mr. Montgomery smothered a smile, and listened, 
unruffled, to his caller’s proposal. 

“My idea now,” he went on, “is to call a mass 
meeting in the Town Hall some day next week, the 
sooner the better. I’ll be the chairman or Mr. 
Emerson or you, I don’t care who it is. We’ll put 
before the people all the points you’ve taken up in 
your articles. We’ll get people who understand the 
different topics to talk about them — some fellow on 
the commercial side and some one else on the beauty 
side and so on; and we’ll have the Glen Point 
nurseryman — ” 

“We ought to have one over here,” interposed 
Mr. Montgomery.” 

“We will if this goes through. There’s a new 
occupation opened here at once by this scheme ! 
We’ll have him give us a rough estimate of how much 
it would cost to make the most prominent spots in 
Rosemont look decent instead of like a deserted 


148 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 

ranch,” exclaimed the alderman, becoming increas- 
ingly enthusiastic. 

“I don’t know that I’d call Rosemont that,” ob- 
jected the editor. “People don’t like to have their 
towns abused too much; but if you can work up senti- 
ment to have those public places fixed up and then 
you can get to work on some sort of plan for prizes 
for the prettiest front yards and the best grown vines 
over doors and so on, and raise some competitive 
feeling I believe we’ll have no more trouble than we 
did about the school gardens. It just takes some one 
to start the ball rolling, and you’re the person to do 
it,” and tactful Mr. Montgomery laid an approving 
hand on the shoulder of the pleased alderman. 

If it had all been cut and dried it could not have 
worked out better. The meeting was packed with 
citizens who proved to be so full of enthusiasm that 
they did not stand in need of conversion. They 
moved, seconded and passed resolution after resolu- 
tion urging the aldermen to vote funds for improve- 
ments and they mentioned spots in need of improve- 
ment and means of improving them that U. S. C. 
never would have had the courage to suggest. 

“We certainly are indebted to you young people 
for a big move toward benefiting Rosemont,” said 
Mr. Montgomery to the Club as he passed the settee 
where they were all seated together. “It’s going to 
be one of the beauty spots of New Jersey before this 
summer is over I” 

“And the Ethels are the authors of the idea!” 
murmured Tom Watkins, applauding silently, as the 
girls blushed. 


CHAPTER XI 

THE FLOWER FESTIVAL 

T he idea of having a town flower-costume party 
was the Ethels’, too. It came to them when 
contributions were beginning to flag, just as they dis- 
covered that the grounds around the fire engine house 
were a disgrace to a self-respecting community, as 
their emphatic friend, the alderman, described them. 

“People are always willing to pay for fun,” Ethel 
Brown said, “and this ought to appeal to them be- 
cause the money that is made by the party will go 
back to them by being spent for the town.” 

Mrs. Morton and Mrs. Emerson and Mrs. Smith 
thought the plan was possible, and they offered to 
enlist the interest of the various clubs and societies to 
which they belonged. The schools were closed now 
so that there was no opportunity of advertising the 
entertainment through the school children, but all 
the clergymen co-operated heartily in every way in 
their power and Mr. Montgomery gave the plan 
plenty of free advertising, not only in the advertising 
columns but through the means of reading notices 
which his reporters prepared with as much interest 
and skill as they had shown in working up public 
opinion on the general improvement scheme. 

“It must be in the school house hall so everybody 
will go,” declared Helen. 

149 


150 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 

“Why not use the hall and the grounds, too?” in- 
quired Ethel Blue. “If it’s a fine evening there are 
various things that would be prettier to have out of 
doors than indoors.” 

“The refreshments, for instance,” explained Ethel 
Brown. “Every one would rather eat his ice cream 
and cake at a table on the lawn in front of the school- 
house than inside where it may be stuffy if it happens 
to be a warm night.” 

“Lanterns on the trees and candles on each table 
would make light enough,” decided Ethel Blue. 

“There could be a Punch and Judy show in a tent 
at the side of the schoolhouse,” suggested Dorothy. 

“What is there flowery about a Punch and Judy 
show?” asked Roger scornfully. 

“Nothing at all,” returned Dorothy meekly, “but 
for some reason or other people always like a Punch 
and Judy show.” 

“Where are we going to get a tent?” 

“A tent would be awfully warm,” Ethel Brown 
decided. “Why couldn’t we have it in the corner 
where there is a fence on two sides? We could lace 
boughs back and forth between the palings and make 
the fence higher, and on the other two sides borrow 
or buy some wide chicken wire from the hardware 
store and make that eye-proof with branches.” 

“And string an electric light wire over them. I be- 
gin to get enthusiastic,” cried Roger. “We could 
amuse, say, a hundred people at a time at ten cents 
apiece, in the side-show corner and keep them away 
from the other more crowded regions.” 

“Exactly,” agreed Dorothy; “and if you can think 


THE FLOWER FESTIVAL 


151 

of any other side show that the people will like 
better than Punch and Judy, why, put it in in- 
stead.” 

“We might have finger shadows — rabbits’ and 
dogs’ heads and so on; George Foster does them 
splendidly, and then have some one recite and some 
one else do a monologue in costume.” 

“Aren’t we going to have that sort of thing in- 
side?” 

“I suppose so, but if your idea is to give more space 
inside, considering that all Rosemont is expected to 
come to this festivity, we might as well have a per- 
formance in two rings, so to speak.” 

“Especially as some of the people might be a little 
shy about coming inside,” suggested Dorothy. 

“Why not forget Punch and Judy and have the 
same performance exactly in both places?” demanded 
Roger, quite excited with his idea. “The Club gives 
a flower dance, for instance, in the hall; then they go 
into the yard and give it there in the ten cent en- 
closure while number two of the program is on the 
platform inside. When number two is done inside 
it is put on outside, and so right through the whole 
performance.” 

“That’s not bad except that the outside people are 
paying ten cents to see the show and the inside peo- 
ple aren’t paying anything.” 

“Well, then, why not have the tables where you 
sell things — if you are going to have any?” — 

“We are,” Helen responded to the question in her 
brother’s voice. 

“ — have your tables on the lawn, and have every- 


152 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 

body pay to see the performance — ten cents to go in- 
side or ten cents to see the same thing in the en- 
closure?” 

“That’s the best yet,” decided Ethel Brown. 
“That will go through well if only it is pleasant 
weather.” 

“I feel in my bones it will be,” and Ethel Blue 
laughed hopefully. 

The appointed day was fair and not too warm. 
The whole U. S. C. which went on duty at the school 
house early in the day, pronounced the behavior of 
the weather to be exactly what it ought to be. 

The boys gave their attention to the arrangement 
of the screen of boughs in the corner of the school 
lot, and the girls, with Mrs. Emerson, Mrs. Morton 
and Mrs. Smith, decorated the hall. Flowers were 
to be sold everywhere, both indoors and out, so there 
were various tables about the room and they all had 
contributed vases of different sorts to hold the blos- 
soms. 

“I must say, I don’t think these look pretty a bit,” 
confessed Dorothy, gazing with her head on one side 
at a large bowl of flowers of all colors that she had 
placed in the middle of one of the tables. 

Her mother looked at it and smiled. 

“Don’t try to show off your whole stock at once,” 
she advised. “Have a few arranged in the way that 
shows them to the best advantage and let Ethel Blue 
draw a poster stating that there are plenty more be- 
hind the scenes. Have your supply at the back or 
under the table in large jars and bowls and replenish 
your vases as soon as you sell their contents.” 


THE FLOWER FESTIVAL 


153 


The Ethels and Dorothy thought this was a sens- 
ible way of doing things and said so, and Ethel 
Blue at once set about the preparation of three 
posters drawn on brown wrapping paper and show- 
ing a girl holding a flower and saying “We have 
plenty more like this. Ask for them.” They 
proved to be very pretty and were put up in the hall 
and the outside enclosure and on the lawn. 

“There are certain kinds of flowers that should al- 
ways be kept low,” explained Mrs. Smith as they all 
sorted over the cut flowers that had been contributed. 
“Flowers that grow directly from the ground like 
crocuses or jonquils or daffodils or narcissus — the 
spring bulbs — should be set into flat bowls through 
netting that will hold them upright. There are 
bowls sold for this purpose.” 

“Don’t they call them ‘pansy bowls’ ?” 

“I have heard them called that. Some of them 
have a pierced china top; others have a silver netting. 
You can make a top for a bowl of any size by cutting 
chicken wire to suit your needs.” 

“I should think a low-growing plant like ageratum 
would be pretty in a vase of that sort.” 

“It would, and pansies, of course, and anemones — 
windflowers — held upright by very fine netting and 
nodding in every current of air as if they were still in 
the woods.” 

“I think I’ll make a covering for a glass bowl we 
have at home,” declared Ethel Brown, who was dili- 
gently snipping ends of stems as she listened. 

“A glass bowl doesn’t seem to me suitable,” an- 
swered her aunt. “Can you guess why?” 


154 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 

Ethel Brown shook her head with a murmured 
“No.” It was Della who offered an explana- 
tion. 

“The stems aren’t pretty enough to look at,” she 
suggested. “When you use a glass bowl or vase the 
stems you see through it ought to be graceful.” 

“I think so,” responded Mrs. Smith. “That’s 
why we always take pleasure in a tall slender glass 
vase holding a single rose with a long stem still bear- 
ing a few leaves. We get the effect that it gives us 
out of doors.” 

“That’s what we like to see,” agreed Mrs. Mor- 
ton. “Narcissus springing from a low bowl is an ap- 
plication of the same idea. So are these few sprays 
of clematis waving from a vase made to hang on the 
wall. They aren’t crowded; they fall easily; they 
look happy.” 

“And in a room you would select a vase that would 
harmonize with the coloring,” added Margaret, who 
was mixing sweetpeas in loose bunches with feathery 
gypsophila. 

“When we were in Japan Dorothy and I learned 
something about the Japanese notions of flower ar- 
rangement,” continued Mrs. Smith. “They usually 
use one very beautiful dominating blossom. If 
others are added they are not competing for first 
place but they act as helpers to add to the beauty of 
the main attraction.” 

“We’ve learned some of the Japanese ways,” said 
Mrs. Emerson. “I remember when people always 
made a bouquet perfectly round and of as many kinds 
o.f flowers as they could put into it.” 


THE FLOWER FESTIVAL 


155 


“People don’t make ‘bouquets’ now; they gather 
a ‘bunch of flowers,’ or they give you a single bloom,” 
smiled her daughter. “But isn’t it true that we get 
as much pleasure out of a single superb chrysan- 
themum or rose as we do out of a great mass of 
them?” 

“There are times when I like masses,” admitted 
Mrs. Emerson. “I like flowers of many kinds if the 
colors are harmoniously arranged, and I like a 
mantelpiece banked with the kind of flowers that 
give you pleasure when you see them in masses In 
the garden or the greenhouse.” 

“If the vases they are in don’t show,” warned Mrs. 
Smith. 

Mrs. Emerson agreed to that. 

“The choice of vases is almost as important as 
the choice of flowers,” she added. “If the stems 
are beautiful they ought to show and you must have 
a transparent vase, as you said about the rose. If 
the stems are not especially worthy of admiration the 
better choice is an opaque vase of china or pottery.” 

“Or silver or copper?” questioned Margaret. 

“Metals and blossoms never seem to me to go well 
together,” confessed Mrs. Emerson. “I have seen 
a copper cup with a bunch of violets loosely arranged 
so that they hung over the edge and the copper 
glinted through the blossoms and leaves and the ef- 
fect was lovely; but flowers to be put into metal must 
be chosen with that in mind and arranged with espe- 
cial care.” 

“Metal jardinieres don’t seem suitable to me, 
either,” confessed Mrs. Emerson. “There are so 


156 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 

many beautiful potteries now that it is possible to find 
something harmonious for every flowerpot.” 

“You don’t object to a silver centrepiece on the 
dining table, do you?” 

“That’s the only place where it doesn’t seem out of 
place,” smiled Mrs. Emerson. “There are so many 
other pieces of silver on the table that it is merely 
one of the articles of table equipment and therefore 
is not conspicuous. Not a standing vase, mind you !” 
she continued. “I don’t know anything more irri- 
tating than to have to dodge about the centrepiece to 
see your opposite neighbor. It’s a terrible bar to 
conversation.” 

They all had experienced the same discomfort, and 
they all laughed at the remembrance. 

“A low bowl arranged flat is the rule for centre- 
pieces,” repeated Mrs. Emerson seriously. 

“Mother always says that gay flowers are the city 
person’s greatest help in brightening up a dark 
room,” said Della as she laid aside all the calliopsis 
from the flowers she was sorting. “I’m going to 
take a bunch of this home to her to-night.” 

“I always have yellow or white or pink flowers in 
the dark corner of our sitting room,” said Mrs. 
Smith. “The blue ones or the deep red ones or the 
ferns may have the sunny spots.” 

“Father insists on yellow blossoms of some kind 
in the library,” added Mrs. Emerson. “He says 
they are as good as another electric light to brighten 
the shadowy side where the bookcases are.” 

“I remember seeing a gay array of window boxes 
at Stratford-on-Avon, once upon a time,” contributed 


THE FLOWER FESTIVAL 


157 


Mrs. Morton. “It was a sunshiny day when I saw 
them, but they were well calculated to enliven the 
very grayest weather that England can produce. I 
was told that the house belonged to Marie Corelli, 
the novelist.” 

“What plants did she have ?” asked Dorothy. 

“Blue lobelia and scarlet geraniums and some 
frisky little yellow bloom ; I couldn’t see exactly what 
it was.” 

“Red and yellow and blue,” repeated Ethel Brown. 
“Was it pretty?” 

“Very. Plenty of each color and all the boxes 
alike all over the front of the house.” 

“We shouldn’t need such vividness under our bril- 
liant American skies,” commented Mrs. Smith. 
“Plenty of green with flowers of one color makes a 
window box in the best of taste, to my way of think- 
ing.” 

“And that color one that is becoming to the house, 
so to speak,” smiled Helen. “I saw a yellow house 
the other day that had yellow flowers in the window 
boxes. They were almost extinguished by their 
background.” 

“I saw a white one in Glen Point with white daisies, 
and the effect was the same,” added Margaret. 
“The poor little flowers were lost. There are ivies 
and some small evergreen shrubs that the greenhouse- 
men raise especially for winter window boxes now. 
I’ve been talking a lot with the nurseryman at Glen 
Point and he showed me some the other day that he 
warranted to keep fresh-looking all through the cold 
weather unless there were blizzards.” 


158 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 

“We must remember those at Sweetbrier Lodge,” 
Mrs. Smith said to Dorothy. 

“Why don’t you give a talk on arranging flowers 
as part of the program this evening?” Margaret 
asked Mrs. Smith. 

“Do, Aunt Louise. You really ought to,” urged 
Helen, and the Ethels added their voices. 

“Give a short talk and illustrate it by the examples 
the girls have been arranging,” Mrs. Morton added, 
and when Mrs. Emerson said that she thought the 
little lecture would have real value as well as interest 
Mrs. Smith yielded. 

“Say what you and Grandmother have been telling 
us and you won’t need to add another thing,” cried 
Helen. “I think it will be the very best number on 
the program.” 

“I don’t believe it will compete with the side show 
in the yard,” laughed Mrs. Smith, “but I’m quite will- 
ing to do it if you think it will give any one pleas- 
ure.” 

“But you’ll be part of the side show in the yard,” 
and they explained the latest plan of running the pro- 
gram. 

When the flowers had all been arranged to their 
satisfaction the girls went into the yard where they 
found the tables and chairs placed for the serving of 
the refreshments. The furniture had been supplied 
by the local confectioner who was to furnish the ice 
cream and give the management a percentage of what 
was received. The cake was all supplied by the 
ladies of the town and the money obtained from its 
sale was clear profit. 


THE FLOWER FESTIVAL 


159 


The girls covered the bleakness of the plain tables 
by placing a centrepiece of radiating ferns flat on the 
wood. On that stood a small vase, each one having 
flowers of but one color, and each one having a dif- 
ferent color. 

Under the trees among the refreshment tables, but 
not in their way, were the sales tables. On one, cut 
flowers were to be sold; on another, potted plants, 
and a special corner was devoted to wild plants from 
the woods. A seedsman had given them a liberal 
supply of seeds to sell on commission, agreeing to 
take back all that were not sold and to contribute one 
per cent, more than he usually gave to his sales peo- 
ple, “for the good of the cause.” 

Every one in the whole town who raised vege- 
tables had contributed to the Housewives’ Table, and 
as the narries of the donors were attached the table 
had all the attraction of an exhibit at a county fair 
and was surrounded all the time by so many men that 
the women who bought the vegetables for home use 
had to be asked to come back later to get them, so 
that the discussion of their merits among their 
growers might continue with the specimens before 
them. 

“That’s a hint for another year,” murmured Ethel 
Blue to Ethel Brown. “We can have a make-be- 
lieve county fair and charge admission, and give 
medals — ” 

“Of pasteboard.” 

“Exactly. I’m glad we thought to have a table 
of the school garden products; all the parents will be 
enormously interested. It will bring them here, and 


i6o ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 


they won’t be likely to go away without spending a 
nickel or a dime on ice cream.” 

A great part of the attractiveness of the grounds 
was due to the contribution of a dealer in garden 
furniture. In return for being allowed to put up 
advertisements of his stock in suitable places where 
they would not be too conspicuous, he furnished sev- 
eral artistic settees, an arbor or two and a small per- 
gola, which the Glen Point greenhouseman decorated 
in return for a like use of his advertising matter. 

Still another table, under the care of Mrs. Mont- 
gomery, the wife of the editor, showed books on 
flowers and gardens and landscape gardening and 
took subscriptions for several of the garden and home 
magazines. Last of all a fancy table was covered 
with dolls and paper dolls dressed like the partici- 
pants in the floral procession that was soon to form 
and pass around the lawn; lamp shades in the form 
of huge flowers; hats, flower-trimmed; and half a 
hundred other small articles including many for ten, 
fifteen and twenty-five cents to attract the children. 

At five o’clock the Flower Festival was opened 
and afternoon tea was served to the early comers. 
All the members of the United Service Club and the 
other boys and girls of the town who helped them 
wore flower costumes. It was while the Ethels were 
serving Mrs. Smith and the Miss Clarks that the 
latter called their attention to a man who sat at a 
table not far away. 

“That man is your rival,” they announced, smiling, 
to Mrs. Smith. 

“My rival! How is that?” inquired Mrs. Smith. 


THE FLOWER FESTIVAL i6i 

“He wants to buy the field.” 

They all exclaimed and looked again at the man 
who sat quietly eating his ice cream as if he had no 
such dreadful intentions. The Ethels, however, 
recognized him as he pushed back a lock of hair that 
fell over his forehead. 

“Why, that’s our werwolf !” they exclaimed after 
taking a good look at him, and they explained how 
they had seen him several times in the field, always 
digging a stick into the ground and examining what 
it brought up. 

“He says he’s a botanist, and he finds so much to 
interest him in the field that he wants to buy it so 
that he may feel free to work there,” said Miss Clark 
the younger. 

“That’s funny,” commented Ethel Blue. “He 
almost never looks at any flowers or plants. He just 
pokes his stick in and that’s all.” 

“He offered us a considerable sum for the prop- 
erty but we told him that you had an option on it, 
Mrs. Smith, and we explained that we couldn’t give 
title anyway.” 

“Did his interest seem to fail?” 

“He asked us a great many questions and we told 
him all about our aunt and the missing cousin. I 
thought you might be interested to know that some 
one else besides yourself sees some good in the land.” 

“It’s so queer,” said the other Miss Clark. “That 
land has never had an offer made for it and here we 
have two within a few weeks of each other.” 

“And we can’t take advantage of either of them!” 

The Ethels noticed later on that the man was 

74 


1 62 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 


joined by a girl about their own age. They looked 
at her carefully so that they would recognize her 
again if they saw her, and they also noticed that the 
werwolf, as he talked to her, so often pushed back 
from his forehead the lock of hair that fell over it 
that it had becbme a habit. 

The full effect of the flower costumes was seen 
after the lanterns were lighted, when some of the 
young married women attended to the tables while 
their youngers marched around the lawn that all 
might see the costumes and be attracted to the enter- 
tainment in the hall and behind the screen in the 
open. 

Roger led the procession, impersonating “Spring.” 

“That’s a new one to me,” ejaculated the editor of 
the Star in surprise. “I always thought ‘Spring’ was 
of the feminine gender.” 

“Not this year,” returned Roger merrily as he 
passed by. 

He was dressed like a tree trunk in a long brown 
cambric robe that fitted him closely and gave him at 
the foot only the absolute space that he needed for 
walking. He carried real apple twigs almost en- 
tirely stripped of their leaves and laden with blos- 
soms made of white and pink paper. The effect was 
of a generously flowering apple tree and every one 
recognized it. 

Behind Roger came several of the spring blossoms 
— the Ethels first, representing the yellow crocus and 
the violet. Ethel Brown wore a white dress covered 
with yellow gauze sewn with yellow crocuses. A 
ring of crocuses hung from its edge and a crocus 


THE FLOWER FESTIVAL 163 

turned upside down made a fascinating cap. All 
the flowers were made of tissue paper. Ethel 
Blue’s dress was fashioned in the same way, her 
violet gauze being covered with violets and her cap 
a tiny lace affair with a violet border. In her case 
she was able to use many real violets and to carry a 
basket of the fresh flowers. The contents was made 
up of small bunches of buttonhole size and she 
stepped from the procession at almost every table to 
sell a bunch to some gentleman sitting there. A 
scout kept the basket always full. 

Sturdy James made a fine appearance in the spring 
division in the costume of a red and yellow tulip. 
He wore long green stockings and a striped tulip on 
each leg constituted his breeches. Another, with the 
points of the petals turning upwards, made his jacket, 
and yet another, a small one, upside down, served as 
a cap. James had been rather averse to appearing 
in this costume because Margaret had told him he 
looked bulbous and he had taken it seriously, but he 
was so applauded that he came to the conclusion that 
it was worth while to be a bulb if you could be a good 
one. 

Helen led the group of summer flowers. As 
“Summer” she wore bunches of all the flowers in the 
garden, arranged harmoniously as in one of the old- 
fashioned bouquets her grandmother had spoken of 
in the morning. It had been a problem to keep all 
these blossoms fresh for it would not be possible for 
her to wear artificial flowers. The Ethels had found 
a solution, however, when they brought home one day 
from the drug store several dozen tiny glass bottles. 


1 64 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 

Around the neck of each they fastened a bit of wire 
and bent It Into a hook which fitted Into an eye sewed 
on to the old but pretty white frock which Helen was 
sacrificing to the good cause. After she had put on 
the dress each one of these bottles was fitted with its 
flowers which had been picked some time before and 
revived in warm water and salt so that they would 
not wilt. 

“These bottles make me think of a story our 
French teacher told us once,” Helen laughed as she 
stood carefully to be made into a bouquet. “There 
was a real Cyrano de Bergerac who lived in the 17th 
century. He told a tale supposed to be about his 
own adventures in which he said that once he fast- 
ened about himself a number of phials filled with 
dew. The heat of the sun attracted them as it does 
the clouds and raised him high in the air. When 
he found that he was not going to alight on the moon 
as he had thought, he broke some of the phials and 
descended to earth again.” 

“What a ridiculous story,” laughed Ethel Blue, 
kneeling at Helen’s feet with a heap of flowers be- 
side her on the floor. 

“The rest of it is quite as foolish. When he 
landed on the earth again he found that the sun was 
still shining, although according to his calculation it 
ought to be midnight; and he also did not recognize 
the place he dropped upon in spite of the fact that 
he had apparently gone straight up and fallen 
straight down. Strange people surrounded him and 
he had difficulty in making himself understood. 
After a time he was taken before an official from 


THE FLOWER FESTIVAL 165 

whom he learned that on account of the rotation of 
the earth under him while he was in the air, although 
he had risen when but two leagues from Paris he 
had descended in Canada.” 

The younger girls laughed delightedly at this 
absurd tale, as they worked at their task. Bits of 
trailing vine fell from glass to glass so that none of 
the holders showed, but a delicate tinkling sounded 
from them like the water of a brook. 

“This gown of yours is certainly successful,” de- 
cided Margaret, surveying the result of the Ethels’ 
work, “but I dare say it isn’t comfortable, so you’d 
better have another one that you can slip into behind 
the scenes after you’ve made the rounds in this.” 

Helen took the advice and after the procession 
had passed by, she put on a pretty flowered muslin 
with pink ribbons. 

Dorothy walked immediately behind Helen. She 
was dressed like a garden lily, her petals wired so 
that they turned out and up at the tips. She wore 
yellow stockings and slippers as a reminder of the 
anthers or pollen boxes on the ends of the stamens 
of the lilies. 

Dicky’s costume created as much sensation as 
Roger’s. He was a Jack-in-the-Pulpit. A suit of 
green striped in two shades fitted him tightly, and 
over his head he carried his pulpit, a wire frame cov- 
ered with the same material of which his clothes were 
made. The shape was exact and he looked so grave 
as he peered forth from his shelter that his appear- 
ance was saluted with hearty hand clapping. 

Several of the young people of the town followed 


1 66 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 


in the Summer division. One of them was a fleur- 
de-lis, wearing a skirt of green leaf blades and a 
bodice representing the purple petals of the blossom. 
George Foster was monkshood, a cambric robe — a 
“domino” — serving to give the blue color note, and 
a very correct imitation of the flower’s helmet an- 
swering the purpose of a head-dress. Gregory Pat- 
ton was Grass, and achieved one of the successful 
costumes of the line with a robe that rippled to the 
ground, green cambric its base, completely covered 
with grass blades. 

“That boy ought to have a companion dressed like 
a haycock,” laughed Mr. Emerson as Gregory passed 
him. 

Margaret led the Autumn division, her dress 
copied from a chestnut tree and burr. Her kirtle 
was of the long, slender leaves overlapping each 
other. The bodice was in the tones of dull yellow 
found in the velvety inside of the opened burr and of 
the deep brown of the chestnut itself. This, too, 
was approved by the onlookers. 

Behind her walked Della, a combination of purple 
asters and golden rod, the rosettes of the former 
seeming a rich and solid material from which the 
heads of goldenrod hung in a delicate fringe. 

A “long-haired Chrysanthemum” was among the 
autumn flowers, his tissue paper petals slightly wired 
to make them stand out, and a stalk of Joe-Pye- 
Weed strode along with his dull pink corymb proudly 
elevated above the throng. 

All alone as a representative of Winter was Tom 
Watkins, decorated superbly as a Christmas Tree, 


THE FLOWER FESTIVAL 


167 


Boughs of Norway spruce were bound upon his arms 
and legs and covered his body. Shining balls hung 
from the twigs, tinsel glistened as he passed under 
the lantern light, and strings of popcorn reached 
from his head to his feet. There was no question 
of his popularity among the children. Every small 
boy who saw him asked if he had a present for 
him. 

The flower procession served to draw the people 
into the hall and the screened corner. They cheer- 
fully yielded up a dime apiece at the entrance to each 
place, and when the “show” was over they were re- 
replaced by another relay of new arrivals, so that the 
program was gone through twice in the hall and twice 
in the open in the course of the evening. 

A march of all the flowers opened the program. 
This was not difficult, for all the boys and girls were 
accustomed to such drills at school, but the effect in 
costumes under the electric light was very striking. 
Roger, still dressed as an apple tree, recited Bryant’s 
“Planting of the Apple Tree.” Dicky delivered a 
brief sermon from his pulpit. George Foster or- 
dered the lights out and went behind a screen on 
which he made shadow finger animals to the delight 
of every child present. Mrs. Smith gave her little 
talk on the arrangement of flowers, illustrating it 
by the examples around the room which were later 
carried out to the open when she repeated her “turn” 
in the enclosure. The cartoonist of the Star gave a 
chalk talk on “Famous Men of the Day,” reciting 
an amusing biography of each and sketching his 
portrait, framed in a rose, a daisy, mountain laurel. 


1 68 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 


a larkspur or whatever occurred to the artist as he 
talked. 

There was music, for Mr. Schuler, who formerly 
had taught music in the Rosemont schools and who 
was now with his wife at Rose House, where the 
United Service Club was taking care of several poor 
women and children, had drilled some of his former 
pupils in flower choruses. One of these, by children 
of Dicky’s age, was especially liked. 

Every one was pleased and the financial result was 
so satisfactory that Rosemont soon began to blossom 
like the flower from which it was named. 

“Team work certainly does pay,” commented 
Roger enthusiastically when the Club met again to 
talk over the great day. 

And every one of them agreed that it did. 


CHAPTER XII 

ENOUGH TO GIVE AWAY 


A t the very beginning of his holidays Stanley 
Clark had gone to Nebraska to replace the de- 
tective who had been vainly trying to find some trace 
of his father’s cousin, Emily Leonard. The young 
man was eager to have the matter straightened out, 
both because it was impossible to sell any of the 
family land unless it were, and because he wanted 
to please Mrs. Smith and Dorothy, and because his 
orderly mind was disturbed at there being a legal 
tangle in his family. 

Perhaps he put into his search more clearness of 
vision than the detective, or perhaps he came to it 
at a time when he could take advantage of what his 
predecessor had done; — whatever the reason, he did 
find a clue and it seemed a strange coincidence that 
it was only a few days after the Miss Clarks had 
received the second offer for their field that a let- 
ter came to them from their nephew, saying that 
he had not only discovered the town to which Emily’s 
daughter had gone and the name of the family into 
which she had been adopted, but had learned the fact 
that the family had later on removed to the neigh- 
borhood of Pittsburg. 

“At least, this brings the search somewhat nearer 
home,” Stanley wrote, “but it also complicates it, 
for ‘the neighborhood of Pittsburg’ is very vague, 
169 


170 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 

and it covers a large amount of country. How- 
ever, I am going to start to-night for Pittsburg to 
see what I can do there. I’ve grown so accustomed 
to playing hide-and-seek with Cousin Emily and I’m; 
so pleased with my success so far that I’m hopeful 
that I may pick up the trail in western Pennsylvania.” 

The Clarks and the Smiths all shared Stanley’s 
hopefulness, for it did indeed seem wonderful that 
he should have found the missing evidence after so 
many weeks of failure by the professional detective, 
and, if he had traced one step, why not the next ? 

The success of the gardens planted by the U. S. C. 
had been remarkable. The plants had grown as 
if they wanted to please, and when blossoming time 
came, they bloomed with all their might. 

“Do you remember the talk you and I had about 
Rose House just before the Fresh Air women and 
children came out?” asked Ethel Blue of her cousin. 

Ethel Brown nodded, and Ethel Blue explained 
the conversation to Dorothy. 

“We thought Roger’s scheme was pretty hard 
for us youngsters to carry out and we felt a little 
uncertain about it, but we made up our minds that 
people are almost always successful when they want 
like everything to do something and make up their 
minds that they are going to put it through and 
learn how to put it through.” 

“We’ve proved it again with the gardens,” re- 
sponded Ethel Brown. “We wanted to have pretty 
gardens and we made up our minds that we could 
if we tried and then we learned all we could about 
them from people and books.” 


ENOUGH TO GIVE AWAY 


171 

“Just see what Roger knows now about fertil- 
izers!” exclaimed Dorothy in a tone of admiration. 
“Fertilizers aren’t a bit interesting until you think 
of them as plant food and realize that plants like 
different kinds of food and try to find out what they 
are. Roger has studied it out and we’ve all had 
the benefit of his knowledge.” 

“Which reminds me that if we want any flowers 
at all next week we’d better put on some nitrate of 
soda this afternoon or this dry weather will ruin 
them.” 

“Queer how that goes right to the blossoms and 
doesn’t seem to make the whole plant grow.” 

“I did a deadly deed to one of my calceolarias,” 
confessed Ethel Blue. “I forgot you mustn’t use 
it after the buds form and I sprinkled away all over 
the plant just as I had been doing.” 

“Did you kill the buds?” 

“It discouraged them. I ought to have put some 
crystals on the ground a little way off and let them 
take it in in the air.” 

“It doesn’t seem as though it were strong enough 
to do either good or harm, does it? One table- 
spoonful in two gallons of water!” 

“Grandfather says he wouldn’t ask for plants to 
blossom better than ours are doing.” Ethel Brown 
repeated the compliment with just pride. 

“It’s partly because we’ve loved to work with 
them and loved them,” insisted Ethel Blue. “Every- 
thing you love answers back. If you hate your work 
it’s just like hating people; if you don’t like a girl 
she doesn’t like you and you feel uncomfortable out- 


172 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 

side and inside ; if you don’t like your work it doesn’t 
go well.” 

“What do you know about hating?” demanded 
Dorothy, giving Ethel Blue a hug. 

Ethel flushed. 

“I know a lot about it,” she insisted. “Some 
days I just despise arithmetic and on those days I 
never can do anything right; but when I try to see 
some sense in it I get along better.” 

They all laughed, for Ethel Blue’s struggles with 
mathematics were calculated to arouse sympathy 
even in a hardened breast. 

“It’s all true,” agreed Helen, who had been listen- 
ing quietly to what the younger girls were saying, 
“and I believe we ought to show people more than 
we do that we like them. I don’t see why we’re 
so scared to let a person know that we think she’s 
done something well, or to sympathize with her 
when she’s having a hard time.” 

“O,” exclaimed Dorothy shrinkingly, “it’s so em- 
barrassing to tell a person you’re sorry.” 

“You don’t have to tell her in words,” insisted 
Helen. “You can make her realize that you under- 
stand what she is going through and that you’d 
like to help her.” 

“How can you do it without talking?” asked 
Ethel Brown, the practical. 

“When I was younger,” answered Helen thought- 
fully, “I used to be rather afraid of a person who 
was in trouble. I thought she might think I was 
Intruding if I spoke of it. But Mother told me 
one day that a person who was suffering didn’t 


ENOUGH TO GIVE AWAY 


173 


want to be treated as if she were in disgrace and 
not to be spoken to, and I’ve always tried to re- 
member it. Now, when I know about it or guess 
it I make a point of being just as nice as I know how 
to her. Sometimes we don’t talk about the trou- 
ble at all; sometimes it comes out naturally after 
a while. But even if the subject isn’t mentioned 
she knows that there is at least one person who is 
interested in her anci her affairs.” 

“I begin to see why you’re so popular at school,” 
remarked Margaret, who had known for a long 
time other reasons for Helen’s popularity. 

Helen threw a leaf at her friend and asked the 
Ethels to make some lemonade. They had brought 
the juice in a bottle and chilled water in a thermos 
bottle, so that the preparation was not hard. There 
were cold cheese straws to eat with it. The Ethels 
had made them in their small kitchen at home by 
rubbing two tablespoonfuls of butter into four table- 
spoonfuls of flour, adding two tablespoonfuls of 
grated cheese, seasoning with a pinch of cayenne, 
another of salt and another of mace, rolling out to 
a thickness of a quarter of an inch, cutting into 
strips about four inches long and half an inch wide 
and baking in a hot oven. 

“ ‘Which I wish to remark and my language is 
plain,’ ” Helen quoted, “that in spite of Dicky’s 
picking all the blossoms we have so many flowers 
now that we ought to do — give them away. 

“Ethel Blue and I have been taking some regularly 
every week to the old ladies at the Home,” returned 
Ethel Brown. 


174 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 

“I was wondering if there were enough to send 
some to the hospital at Glen Point,” suggested Mar- 
garet. “The Glen Point people are pretty good 
about sending flowers, but the hospital is an old 
story with them and sometimes they don’t remember 
when they might.” 

“I should think we might send some there and 
some to the Orphanage,” said Dorothy, from whose 
large garden the greater part of the supply would 
have to come. “Have the orphans any gardens to 
work in?” 

“They have beds like your school garden here 
in Rosemont, but they have to give the vegetables 
to the house and I suppose it isn’t much fun to raise 
vegetables and then have them taken away from 
you.” 

“They eat them themselves.” 

“But they don’t know Willy’s tomato from' 
Johnny’s. If Willy and Johnny were allowed to 
sell their crops they’d be willing to pay out of the 
profit for the seed they use and they’d take a lot 
of interest in it. The housekeeper would buy all 
they’d raise, and they’d feel that their gardens were 
self-supporting. Now they feel that the seed is 
given to them out of charity, and that it’s a stingy 
sort of charity after all because they are forced to 
pay for the seed by giving up their vegetables 
whether they want to or not.” 

“Do they enjoy working the gardens?” 

“I should say not! James and I said the other 
day that they were the most forlorn looking gar- 
deners we ever laid our eyes on.” 


ENOUGH TO GIVE AWAY 


175 

“Don’t they grow any flowers at all?” 

“Just a few in a border around the edge of their 
vegetable gardens and some in front of the main 
building where they’ll be seen from the street.” 

The girls looked at each other and wrinkled their 
noses. 

“Let’s send some there every week and have the 
children understand that young people raised them 
and thought it was fun to do it.” 

“And can’t you ask to have the flowers put in the 
dining-room and the room where the children are in 
the evening and not in the reception room where 
only guests will see them?” 

“I will,” promised Margaret. “James and I 
have a scheme to try to have the children work 
their gardens on the same plan that the children do 
here,” she went on. “We’re going to get Father 
to put it before the Board of Management, if we 
can.” 

“I do hope he will. The kiddies here are so 
wild over their gardens that it’s proof to any one 
that it’s a good plan.” 

“Oo-hoo,” came Roger’s call across the field. 

“Oo-hoo. Come up,” went back the answer. 

“What are you girls talking about?” inquired the 
young man, arranging himself comfortably with his 
back against a rock and accepting a paper tumbler 
of lemonade and some cheese straws. 

Helen explained their plan for disposing of the 
extra flowers from their gardens. 

“It’s Service Club work; we ought to have started 
it earlier,” she ended. 


176 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 

“The Ethels did begin it some time ago; I caught 
them at it,” he accused, shaking his finger at his 
sister and cousin. 

“I told the girls we had been taking flowers to 
the Old Ladies’ Home,” confessed Ethel Brown. 

“O, you have I I didn’t know that! I did find 
out that you were supplying the Atwoods down by 
the bridge with sweetpeas.” 

“There have been such oodles,” protested Ethel 
Blue. 

“Of course. It was the right thing to do.” 

“How did you know about it, anyway? Weren’t 
you taking flowers there yourself?” 

“No, ma’am.” 

“What were you doing?” 

“I know; I saw him digging there one day.” 

“O, keep still, Dorothy,” Roger remonstrated. 

“You might as well tell us about it.” 

“It isn’t anything. I did look in one day to ask 
if they’d like some sweetpeas, but I found the 
Ethels were ahead of me. The old lady has a fine 
snowball bush and a beauty syringa in front of the 
house. When I spoke about them she said she had 
always wanted to have a bed of white flowers around 
the two bushes, so I offered to make one for her. 
That’s all.” 

“Good for Roger!” cried Margaret. “Tell us 
what you put into it. We’ve had pink and blue and 
yellow beds this year; we can add white next year.” 

“Just common things,” replied Roger. “It was 
rather late so I planted seeds that would hurry up ; 
sweet alyssum for a border, of course, and white 


ENOUGH TO GIVE AWAY 


177 


verbenas and balsam, and petunias, and candytuft 
and phlox and stocks and portulaca and poppies. 
Do you remember, I asked you, Dorothy, if you 
minded my taking up that aster that showed a white 
bud? That went to Mrs. Atwood. The seeds are 
all coming up pretty well now and the old lady is as 
pleased as Punch.” 

“I should think she might be I Can the old gentle- 
man cultivate them or is his rheumatism too bad?” 

“I put in an hour there every once in a while,” 
Roger admitted reluctantly. 

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of I” laughed Helen 
encouragingly. “What I want to know is how we 
are to send our flowers in to New York to the Flower 
and Fruit Guild. Della said she’d look it up and 
let us know.” 

“She did. I saw Tom yesterday and he gave me 
these slips and asked me to tell you girls about them 
and I forgot it.” 

Roger bobbed his head by way of asking forgive- 
ness, which was granted by a similar gesture. 

“It seems that the National Plant, Flower and 
Fruit Guild will distribute anything you send to it 
at 70 Fifth Avenue; or you can select some institu- 
tion you’re interested in and send your stuff directly 
to it, and if you use one of these Guild pasters the 
express companies will carry the parcel free.” 

“Good for the express companies!” exclaimed 
Ethel Brown. 

“Here’s one of the pasters,” and Roger handed 
one of them to Margaret while the others crowded 
about to read it. 

75 


178 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 


APPROVED LABEL 

NATIONAL PLANT, FLOWER AND FRUIT GUILD, 
70 Fifth Avenue, New York City. 


Express Companies 
Adams 
American 
Great Northern 
National 
United States 
Wells Fargo 
Western 


WILL DELIVER FREE 
Within a distance of one hundred (100) 
miles from stations on their lines to any 
charitable institution or organization within 
the delivery limits of adjacent cities. If an 
exchange of baskets is made they will be re- 
turned without charge. 


Conditions 


This property is carried at owner’s risk 
of loss or damage. No box or basket 
shall exceed twenty (20) pounds in 
- weight. All jellies to be carefully 
packed and boxed. All potted plants 
to be set in boxes. 


For Chapel of Comforter, 

10 Horatio Street, 

Ne‘w York City. 


From United Service Club, 

Rosemont, Nevo Jersey. 


KINDLY DELIVER PROMPTLY. 


“Where It says ‘For,’ ” explained Roger, “you 
fill in, say, ‘Chapel of the Comforter, 10 Horatio 
Street’ or ‘St. Agnes’ Day Nursery,’ 7 Charles 
Street,’ and you write ‘United Service Club, Rose- 
mont, N. J.,’ after ‘From.’ ” 

“It says ‘Approved Label’ at the top,” Ethel 
Brown observed questioningly. 

“That’s so people won’t send flowers to their 
friends and claim free carriage from the express 
companies on the ground that It’s for charity,” 
Roger went on. “Then you fill out this postcard 
and put It Into every bundle you send. 


ENOUGH TO GIVE AWAY 


Sender Will Please Fill Out One of These Cards as far as 
“Received by” and Enclose in Every Shipment. 

National Plant, Flower and Fruit Guild. 

National Office: 70 Fifth Avenue, N. Y. C. 

Sender 

Town 

Sends to-day (Date) 

Plants Flowers (Bunches) 

Fruit or Vegetables Quarts or Bushels 

Jelly, Preserved Fruit or Grape Juice (estimated @ pint as a 

glass) Glasses. 

Nature Material 

To (Institution) 

Rec’d by 


Address 

Condition Date 

“That tells the people at the Day Nursery, for 
instance, just what you packed and assures them that 
the parcel hasn’t been tampered with; they acknowl- 
edge the receipt at the foot of the card, — here, do 
you see? — and send it to the ‘New York City 
Branch, National Plant, Flower and Fruit Guild, 70 
Fifth Ave., New York City.’ That enables the 
Guild to see that the express company is reporting 
correctly the number of bundles it has carried.” 

“They’ve worked out the best way after long 
experience, Tom says, and they find this is excellent. 
They recommend it to far-off towns that send to 
them for help about starting a guild.” 

“Let’s send our flowers to Mr. Watkins’s chapel,” 
suggested Ethel Blue. “Della told me the people 
hardly ever see a flower, it’s so far to any of the 
parks where there are any.” 

“Our women at Rose House were pathetic over 


i8o ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 


the flowers when they first came,” said Helen. 
“Don’t you remember the Bulgarian? She was a 
country girl and she cried when she first went into 
the garden.” 

“I’m glad we planted a flower garden there as 
well as a vegetable garden.” 

“It has been as much comfort to the women as 
ours have been to us.” 

“I think they would like to send in some flowers 
from their garden beds to the chapel,” suggested 
Ethel Blue. “I was talking with Mrs. Paterno the 
other day and she said they all felt that they wanted 
all their friends to have a little piece of their splen- 
did summer. This will be a way for them to help.” 

“Mr. Watkins’s assistant would see that the 
bunches were given to their friends if they marked 
them for special people,” said Ethel Brown. 

“Let’s get it started as soon as we can,” said 
Helen. “You’re secretary, Ethel Blue; write to-day 
to the Guild for some pasters and postcards and 
tell them we are going to send to Mr. Watkins’s 
chapel; and Ethel Brown, you seem to get on pretty 
well with Bulgarian and Italian and a few of the 
other tongues that they speak at Rose House — sup- 
pose you try to make the women understand what 
we are going to do. Tell them we’ll let them know 
on what day we’re going to send the parcel in, so 
that they can cut their flowers the night before and 
freshen them in salt and water before they travel.” 

“Funny salt should be a freshener,” murmured 
Dorothy, as the Ethels murmured their understand- 
ing of the duties their president assigned to them. 


CHAPTER XIII 


IN BUSINESS 

I T was quite clear to the Clarks that the “botanist” 
had not given up his hope of buying the field, in 
spite of the owners’ insistence that not only was its 
title defective but that the option had been promised 
to Mrs. Smith. He roamed up and down the road 
almost every day, going into the field, as the girls 
could see from their elevation in Fitz-James’s woods, 
a»nd stopping at the Clarks’ on his return if he saw 
any of the family on the veranda, to inquire what 
news had come from their nephew. 

“I generally admire persistency,” remarked Mr. 
Clark one day to Mrs. Smith and Dorothy, and the 
Ethels, “but in this case it irritates me. When you 
tell a man that you can’t sell to him and that you 
wouldn’t if you could it seems as if he might take 
the hint and go away.” 

“I don’t like him,” and Mrs. Smith gave a shrug 
of distaste. “He doesn’t look you squarely in the 
face.” 

“I hate that trick he has of brushing his hair out 
of his eyes. It makes me nervous,” confessed the 
younger Miss Clark. 

“I can’t see why a botanist doesn’t occasionally 
look at a plant,” observed -Dorothy. “We’ve 

i8i 


1 82 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 


watched him day after day and we’ve almost never 
seen him do a thing except push his stick into the 
ground and examine it afterwards.” 

“Do you remember that girl who was with him 
at the Flower Festival?” inquired Ethel Brown. “I 
saw her with him again this afternoon at the field. 
When he pushed his cane down something seemed 
to stick to it when it came up and he wiped it off 
with his hand and gave it to her.” 

“Could you see what it was like?” 

“It looked like dirt to me.” 

“What did she do with it?” 

“She took it and began to turn it around in her 
hand, rubbing it with her fingers the way Dorothy 
does when she’s making her clay things.” 

Mr. Clark brought down his foot with a thump 
upon the porch. 

“I’ll bet you five million dollars I know what he’s 
up to!” he exclaimed. 

“What?” “What?” “What?” rang out from 
every person on the porch. 

“I’ll go right over there this minute and find out 
for myself.” 

“Find out what?” 

“Do tell us.” 

“What do you think it is?” 

Mr. Clark paused on the steps as he was about 
to set off. 

“Clay,” he answered briefly. “There are capital 
clays in different parts of New Jersey. Don’t you 
remember there are potteries that make beautiful 
things at Trenton? I shouldn’t wonder a bit if that 


IN BUSINESS 183 

field has pretty good clay and this man wants to buy 
it and start a pottery there.” 

“Next to my house!” exclaimed Mrs. Smith dis- 
gustedly. 

“Don’t be afraid; if we’re ever able to sell the 
field you’re the person who will get it,” promised 
the old gentleman’s sisters in chorus. “We don’t 
want a pottery on the street any more than you do,” 
they added, and expressed a wish that their brother 
might be able to convince the persistent would-be 
purchaser of the utter hopelessness of his wishes. 

“What do you hear from Stanley?” Mrs. Smith 
asked. 

“He’s still quite at sea in Pittsburg — if one may 
use such an expression about a place as far from 
the ocean as that!” laughed Miss Clark. “He 
thinks he’ll go fast if ever he gets a start, but he 
hasn’t found any trace of the people yet. He’s 
going to search the records not only in Allegheny 
County but in Washington and Westmoreland and 
Fayette Counties and the others around Pittsburg, 
if it’s necessary. He surely is persistent.” 

“Isn’t it lucky he is? And don’t you hope he’ll 
find some clue before his holidays end? That 
detective didn’t seem to make any progress at 
all!” 

Mr. Clark came back more than ever convinced 
that he had guessed the cause of the “botanist’s” 
perseverance. 

“Unless my eyes and fingers deceive me greatly 
this is clay and pretty smooth clay,” he reported to 
the waiting group, and Dorothy, who knew some- 


1 84 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 

thing about clay because she had been taught to 
model, said she thought so, too. 

“We know his reason for wanting the land, then,” 
declared Mr. Clark; “now if we could learn why he 
can’t seem to take it in that he’s not going to get it, 
no matter what happens, we might be able to make 
him take his afternoon walks in some other direc- 
tion.” 

“Who is he? And where is he staying?” In- 
quired Mrs. Smith. 

“He calls himself Hapgood and he’s staying at 
the Motor Inn.” 

“Is the little girl his daughter?” 

“I’ll ask him if he ever comes here again,” and 
Mr. Clark looked as if he almost wished he would 
appear, so that he might gratify his curiosity. 

The Motor Inn was a house of no great size on 
the main road to Jersey City. A young woman, 
named Foster, lived In it with her mother and 
brother. The latter, George, was a high school 
friend of Helen and Roger. Miss Foster taught 
dancing In the winter and, being an enterprising 
young woman, had persuaded her mother to open 
the old house for a tea room for the motorists who 
sped by In great numbers on every fair day, and 
who had no opportunity to get a cup of tea and a 
sandwich any nearer than Glen Point in one direc- 
tion and Athens Creek In the other. 

“Here are we sitting down and doing nothing to 
attract the money out of their pockets and they are 
hunting for a place to spend It !” she had exclaimed. 

The house was arranged like the Emerson farm- 


IN BUSINESS 


185, 

house, with a wide hall dividing it, two rooms on 
each side. Miss Foster began by putting out a rus- 
tic sign which her brother made for her. 

MOTOR INN 
TEA and SANDWICHES 
LUNCHEON DINNER 

it read. The entrance was attractive with well-kept 
grass and pretty flowers. Miss Foster took a sur- 
vey of it from the road and thought she would like 
to go inside herself if she happened to be passing. 

They decided to keep the room just in front of 
the kitchen for the family, but the room across the 
hall they fitted with small tables of which they had 
enough around the house. The back room they re- 
served for a rest room for the ladies, and provided it 
with a couch and a dressing table always kept fully 
equipped with brushes, pins and hairpins. 

“If we build up a real business we can set tables 
here in the hall,” Miss Foster suggested. 

“Why not on the veranda at the side?” her 
mother asked. 

“That’s better still. We might put a few out 
there to indicate that people can have their tea 
there if they want to, and then let them take their 
choice in fair weather.” 

The Inn had been a success from the very first 
day when a car stopped and delivered a load of 
people who ate their simple but well-cooked luncheon 
hungrily and liked it so well that they ordered din- 
ner for the following Sunday and promised to send 
other parties. 


1 86 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 


“What I like best about your food, if you’ll al- 
low me to say so,” the host of the machine-load said 
to Miss Foster, “is that your sandwiches are deli- 
cate and at the same time there are more than two 
bites to them. They are full-grown sandwiches, 
man’s size.” 

“My brother calls them ‘lady sandwiches’ 
though,” laughed Miss Foster. “He says any sand- 
wich with the crust cut off is unworthy a man’s at- 
tention.” 

“Tell him for me that he’s mistaken. No crust 
on mine, but a whole slice of bread to make up for 
the loss,” and he paid his bill enthusiastically and 
packed away into his thermos box a goodly pile of 
the much-to-be-enjoyed sandwiches. 

People for every meal of the day began to appear 
at the Motor Inn, for it was surprising how many 
parties made a before-breakfast start to avoid the 
heat of the day on a long trip, and turned up at the 
Inn about eight or nine o’clock demanding coffee 
and an omelette. Then one or two Rosemont peo- 
ple came to ask if friends of theirs might be accom- 
modated with rooms and board for a week or two, 
and in this way the old house by the road grew rap- 
idly to be more like the inn its sign called it than 
the tea room it was intended to be. Servants were 
added, another veranda was built on, and it looked 
as if Miss Foster would not teach dancing when 
winter came again but would have to devote herself 
to the management of the village hotel which the 
town had always needed. 

It was while the members of the U. S. C. were 


IN BUSINESS 


187 

eating ices and cakes there late one afternoon when 
they had walked to the station with the departing 
Watkinses that the Ethels had one of the ideas 
that so often struck them at almost the same mo- 
ment. It came as they watched a motor party go 
off, supplying themselves with a box of small cakes 
for the children after trying to buy from Miss 
Foster the jar of wild iris that stood in state on the 
table in the hall. It was not fresh enough to travel 
they had decided when their hostess had offered to 
give it to them and they all had examined the pur- 
ple heads that showed themselves to be past their 
prime when they were brought out into the light 
from the semi-darkness of the hall. 

“Couldn’t we — ?” murmured Ethel Blue with up- 
lifted eye-brows, glancing at Ethel Brown. 

“Let’s ask her if we may?” replied Ethel Brown, 
and without any more discussion than this they laid 
before Miss Foster the plan that had popped into 
their minds ready made. Ethel Brown was the 
spokeswoman. 

“Would you mind if we had a flower counter here 
in your hall?” she asked. “We need to make some 
money for our women at Rose House.” 

“A flower counter? Upon my word, children, 
you take my breath away!” responded Miss Foster. 

“We’d try not to give you any trouble,” said Ethel 
Blue. “One of us would stay here every day to 
look after it and we’d pay rent for the use of the 
space.” 

“Upon my word!” exclaimed Miss Foster again. 
“You must let me think a minute.” 


1 88 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 


She was a rapid thinker and her decision was 
quickly made. 

“We’ll try it for a week,” she said. “Perhaps 
we’ll find that there isn’t enough demand for the 
flowers to make it worth while, though people often 
want to buy any flowers they see here, as those peo- 
ple you saw did.” 

“If you’ll tell us just what space we can have 
we’ll try not to bother you,” promised Ethel Blue 
again, and Miss Foster smiled at her eagerness. 

“We want it to be a regular business, so will you 
please tell us how much rent we ought to pay?” 
asked Ethel Brown. 

Miss Foster smiled again, but she was trying to 
carry on a regular business herself and she knew 
how she would feel if people did not take her seri- 
ously. 

“We’ll call it five per cent of what you sell,” she 
said. “I don’t think I could make it less,” and she 
smiled again. 

“That’s five cents on every dollar’s worth,” cal- 
culated Ethel Brown seriously. “That isn’t enough 
unless you expect us to sell a great many dollars’ 
worth.” 

“We’ll call it that for this trial week, anyway,” 
decided Miss Foster. “If the test goes well we can 
make another arrangement. If you have a pretty 
table it will be an attraction to my hall and perhaps 
I shall want to pay you for coming,” she added good 
naturedly. 

She pointed out to them the exact spot on which 
they might place their flowers and agreed to let 


IN BUSINESS 189 

them arrange the flowers daily for her rooms and 
tables and to pay them for it. 

“I have no flowers for cutting this summer,” she 
said, “and I’ve been bothered getting some every 
day. It has taken George’s time when he should 
have been doing other things.” 

“We’ll do it for the rent,” offered Ethel Blue. 

“No, I’ve been buying flowers outside and using 
my own time in arranging them. It’s only fair that 
I should pay you as I would have paid some one 
long ago if I could have found the right person. 
I stick to the percentage arrangement for the 
rent.” 

On the way home the girls realized with some 
discomfiture that without consulting Mrs. Morton 
and Mrs. Smith they had made an arrangement that 
would keep them away from home a good deal and 
put them in a rather exposed position. 

“What do you suppose Mother and Aunt Louise 
will say?” asked Ethel Brown doubtfully. 

“I think they’ll let us do it. They know we need 
the money for Rose House just awfully, and they 
like Miss Foster and her mother — I’ve heard Aunt 
Marion say they were so brave about undertaking 
the Inn.” 

Her voice quavered off into uncertainty, for she 
realized as she spoke that what a young woman of 
Miss Foster’s age did in connection with her mother 
was a different matter from a business venture en- 
tered into alone by girls of fourteen. 

The fact that the business venture was to be car- 
ried on under the eye of Mrs. Foster and her daugh- 


190 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 

ter, ladies whom Mrs. Morton knew well and re- 
spected and admired, was the turning point in her 
decision to allow the girls to conduct the affair which 
had entered their minds so suddenly. She and 
Mrs. Smith went to the Inn and assisted in the 
arrangement of the first assortment of flowers and 
plants, saw to it that there was a space on the back 
porch where they could be handled without the wa- 
ter or vases being in the way of the workers in the 
Inn, suggested that an additional sign reading 

PLANTS and CUT FLOWERS 

be hung below the sign outside and that a card 

FOR THE BENEFIT OF ROSE HOUSE 

be placed over the table inside, and then went away 
and left the girls to manage affairs themselves. 

It was while Ethel Blue was drawing the poster 
to hang over the table that the “botanist” walked 
into the hall and strolled over to investigate the 
addition to the furnishings. He asked a question 
or two in a voice they did not like. They noticed 
that the young girl with him called him “Uncle Dan” 
and that he called her “Mary.” 

The girls had arranged their flowers according 
to Mrs. Smith’s and Mrs. Emerson’s ideas, not 
crowding them but showing each to its best advan- 
tage and selecting for each a vase that suited its 
form and coloring. Their supplies were kept out 
of sight in order not to mar the effect. The tables 
of the tea rooms were decorated with pink on this 
opening day, both because they thought that some 


IN BUSINESS 


191 

of the guests might see some connection between 
pink and the purpose of the sale, helping Rose 
House — and for the practical reason that they had 
more pink blossoms than any other color, thanks 
to their love of that gay hue. 

It was noon before any people outside of the resi- 
dent guests of the Inn stopped at the house. Then 
a party of people evidently from a distance, for they 
were covered with dust, ordered luncheon. While 
the women were arranging their hair in the dressing 
room the men came over to the flower table and 
asked countless questions. 

“Here, Gerald,” one called to another, “these 
young women have just begun this business to-day 
and they haven’t had a customer yet. I’m going to 
be the first; you can be the second.” 

“Nothing of the sort; I’ll be the first myself,” and 
“Gerald” tossed half a dollar on to the table with 
an order for “Sweetpeas, all pink, please.” 

Ethel Blue, flushed with excitement over this first 
sale, set about filling a box with the fresh butterfly 
blossoms, while Ethel Brown attended to the man 
who had begun the conversation. He wanted “A 
bunch of bachelor’s buttons for a young lady with 
blue eyes.” An older man who came to see what 
the younger ones were doing bought buttonholes for 
all the men and directed that a handful of flowers 
of different kinds be placed beside each plate on the 
large table on the shady porch where they were to 
have their meal. 

When the women appeared they were equally in- 
terested, and inquired all about Rose House. One 


192 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 

of them directed that enough ferns for the renewal 
of a centerpiece should be ready for her to take 
away when they left and the other bought one of the 
hanging baskets which Roger had arranged as a sam- 
ple of what they could supply if called upon. 

“Roger will be tickled to pieces that his idea 
caught on at once,” Ethel Brown murmured to Ethel 
Blue as they sorted and packed their orders, not 
very deftly, but swiftly enough for the posies to add 
to the enjoyment of the people at the table and for 
the parcels to be ready for them when the motor 
came to the door. 

“We’ll tell all our friends about you,” the guests 
promised as they left. 

These were the only patrons until afternoon 
brought in several parties for tea. Almost every 
one of them was sufficiently drawn by the “Rose 
House” placard to make inquiries and several of 
them bought flowers and potted plants. The same 
was true of the dinner arrivals. 

When the girls examined their receipts for the 
day they found they had taken in over seven dollars, 
had booked several orders and already had learned 
a good deal about what people liked and what they 
could carry conveniently in their machines. 

“We shan’t need to have so many cut flowers 
here,” they decided after the day’s experience. “It’s 
better to leave them on the plants and then if we 
run short to telephone to the house and have Dicky 
bring over an extra supply.” 

“These potted plants are all right here, though. 
We can leave them on the back porch at night. Miss 



''Ethel Blue flushed with excitement over the flrst sale” 

[See p. 191] 



• t 

9 




% 





» 







•4 









« 

• I ' • 

9 

V 

% 

t 



% 


> 


b 


. t 


« 

V , 




IN BUSINESS 


193 

Foster says, and bring them in to the table in the 
morning.” 

“We must get Roger to fill some more hanging 
baskets and ox muzzles and make some ivy balls; 
those are going to take.” 

The plan worked out extremely well, its only draw- 
back being that the girls had to give more time to 
the table at the Inn than they liked. They were 
“spelled” however, by other members of the Club, 
and finally, as a result of a trip when they all went 
away for a few days, they engaged a schoolmate of 
the Ethels who had helped them occasionally, to give 
her whole time to the work at the Inn. 

Financially the scheme worked out very well. 
When it came time to pay the rent for the first week 
the Ethels decided that they were accepting charity 
if they only paid Miss Foster five per cent, of their 
gross earnings, so they doubled it. 

“I am buying the cut flowers at the same price that 
the ^irls are selling them to other customers, and I 
am glad to pay for their arrangement for it releases 
me to attend to matters that need me more,” she had 
explained. “Even if it should be a few cents on the 
wrong side of my account, I am glad to contribute 
something to Rose House. And the motoring season 
is comparatively short, too.” 

Every once in a while they received an idea from 
some one who asked for something they did not have. 
One housekeeper wanted fresh herbs and the Ethels 
telephoned directions for the picking of the herb 
bed that Roger had planted for their own kitchen 
use. 


76 


194 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 

“We need the herbs ourselves, Miss Ethel,” came 
back a protest from Mary. 

“I don’t want to refuse to fill any order I get, 
Mary,” Ethel Brown insisted. “Next year we’ll 
plant a huge bed, enough for a dozen kitchens.” 

This unexpected order resulted in the making of 
another poster giving the information that fresh 
kitchen herbs might be had on order and would be 
delivered by parcel post to any address. 

Several of their customers demanded ferns for 
their houses indoors or for their porches or wild 
gardens. This order was not welcome for it meant 
that some one had to go to the woods to get them as 
none had been planted in the gardens as yet. Still, 
in accordance with their decision never to refuse to 
fill an order unless it was absolutely impossible, the 
girls went themselves or sent one of the boys on a 
search for what they needed. 

One steady customer was an invalid who lived in 
Athens Creek and who could drive only a few miles 
once or twice a week. She happened in to the Inn 
one day and ever after she made the house her goal. 
Her especial delight was meadow flowers, and she 
placed a standing order to have an armful of meadow 
blossoms ready for her every Thursday. This neces- 
sitated a visit to the meadows opposite Grandfather 
Emerson’s house every Wednesday afternoon so 
that the flowers should have recovered from their 
first shock by the next morning. 

“This takes me back to the days when I used to 
follow the flowers through the whole summer,” the 
invalid cried delightedly. “Ah, Joe-Pye-Weed has 


IN BUSINESS 


195 

arrived,” she exclaimed joyfully over the handsome 
blossom. 

When the Ethels and Dorothy received their first 
order for the decoration of a house for an afternoon 
reception they were somewhat overcome. 

“Can we do it?” they asked each other. 

They concluded they could. One went to the 
house two days beforehand to examine the rooms 
and to see what vases and bowls they should have at 
their disposal. Then they looked over the gardens 
very carefully to see what blossoms would be cut on 
the appointed day, and then they made a plan with 
pencil and paper. 

Mr. Emerson lent his car on the morning of the 
appointed day and Roger went with them to unload 
the flowers and plants. They had kept the flowers 
of different colors together, a matter easy to do when 
cutting from their beds of special hues, and this ar- 
rangement made easy the work of decorating dif- 
ferent rooms in different colors. The porch was 
made cool with ferns and hanging vines; the hall, 
w^hich seemed dark to eyes blinded by the glare out- 
side, was brightened with yellow posies; the dining 
room had delicate blue lobelia mingled with gypso- 
phila springing from low, almost unseen dishes all 
over the table where the tea and coffee were poured, 
and hanging in festoons from the smaller table on 
which stood the bowl of grape juice lemonade, made 
very sour and very sweet and enlivened with charged 
water. The girls profited by this combination, for 
the various amounts used in it were being “tried out” 
during the morning and with every new trial refresh- 


196 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 

ing glasses were handed about for criticism by the 
workers. 

In the drawing room where the hostess stood to 
receive, superb pink poppies reared their heads from 
tall vases, pink snapdragons bobbed on the mantel 
piece and a bank of pink candytuft lay on the top of 
the piano. A lovely vine waved from a wall vase of 
exquisite design and vines trailed around the wide 
door as naturally as if they grew there instead of 
springing from bottles of water concealed behind 
tall jars of pink hollyhocks. 

“It is perfectly charming, my dears, and I can’t 
tell you how obliged I am,” said their hostess as she 
pressed a bill into Ethel Brown’s hand. “I know 
that every woman who will be here will want you the 
next time she entertains, and I shall tell everybody 
you did it.” 

She was as good as her word and the attempt re- 
sulted in several other orders. The girls tried to 
make each house different from any that they had 
decorated before, and they thought that they owed 
the success that brought them many compliments to 
the fact that they planned it all out beforehand and 
left nothing to be done in a haphazard way. 

Meanwhile Rose House benefited greatly by the 
welcome weekly additions from the flower sale to its 
slender funds. 

“I’m not sure it isn’t roses ye are yerselves, yer 
that sweet to look at!” exclaimed Moya, the cook at 
Rose House, one day when the girls were there. 

And they admitted themselves that if happiness 
made them sweet to look at it must be true. 


CHAPTER XIV 

UNCLE dan’s researches 

TNCLE dan,” whose last name was Hap- 
good, did not cease his calls upon the Clarks. 
Sometimes he brought with him his niece, whose 
name, they learned, was Mary Smith. 

“Another Smith!” ejaculated Dorothy who had 
lived long enough in the world to find out the appar- 
ent truth of the legend, that originally all the inhabi- 
tants of the earth were named Smith and so con- 
tinued until some of them misbehaved and were given 
other names by way of punishment. 

No one liked Mr. Hapgood better as time went 
on. 

“I believe he is a twentieth century werwolf, as 
Dorothy said,” Ethel Brown insisted. “He’s a wolf 
turned into a man but keeping the feelings of a 
wolf.” 

The girls found little to commend in the manners 
of his niece and nothing to attract. By degrees the 
“botanist’s” repeated questioning put him in com- 
mand of all the information the Clarks had them- 
selves about the clue that Stanley was hunting down. 
He seemed especially interested when he learned that 
the search had been transferred to the vicinity of 
Pittsburg. 

“My sister, Mary’s mother, lived near Pittsburg,” 
197 


198 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 

he told them when he heard it; “I know that part of 
the country pretty well.” 

For several days he was not seen either by the 
Clarks or by the girls who went to the Motor Inn to 
attend to the flowers, and Mrs. Foster told the Ethels 
that Mary had been left in her care while her uncle 
went away on a business trip. 

At the end of a week he appeared again at the 
Clarks’, bringing the young girl with him. He re- 
ceived the usual courteous but unenthusiastic recep- 
tion with which they always met this man who had 
forced himself upon them so many times. Now his 
eyes were sparkling and more nervously than ever he 
kept pushing back the lock of hair that hung over his 
forehead. 

“Well, I’ve been away,” he began. 

The Clarks said that they had heard so. 

“I been to western Pennsylvania.” 

His hearers expressed a lukewarm interest. 

“I went to hunt up the records of Fayette County 
concerning the grandparents of Mary here.” 

“I hope you were successful,” remarked the elder 
Miss Clark politely. 

“Yes, ma’am, I was,” shouted Hapgood in reply, 
thumping his hand on the arm of his chair with a 
vigor that startled his hosts. “Yes, sir, I was, sir; 
perfectly successful; ^w-tirely successful.” 

Mr. Clark murmured something about the gratifi- 
cation the success must be to Mr. Hapgood and 
awaited the next outburst. 

It came without delay. 

“Do you want to know what I found out?” 


UNCLE DAN’S RESEARCHES 


199 


“Certainly, if you care to tell us.” 

“Well, I found out that Mary here is the grand- 
daughter of your cousin, Emily Leonard, you been 
huntin’ for.” 

“Mary!” exclaimed the elder Miss Clark startled, 
her slender hands fluttering agitatedly as the man’s 
heavy voice forced itself upon her ears and the mean- 
ing of what he said entered her mind. 

“This child!” ejaculated the younger sister. Miss 
Eliza, doubtfully, adjusting her glasses and leaning 
over to take a closer look at the proposed addition to 
the family. 

“Hm!” 

This comment came from Mr. Clark. 

A dull flush crept over Hapgood’s face. 

“You don’t seem very cordial,” he remarked. 

“O,” the elder Miss Clark, Miss Maria, began 
apologetically, but she was interrupted by her 
brother. 

“You have the proofs, I suppose.” 

Hapgood could not restrain a glare of dislike, but 
he drew a bundle of papers from his pocket. 

“I knew you’d ask for ’em.” 

“Naturally,” answered the calm voice of Mr. 
Clark. 

“So I copied these from the records and swore to 
’em before a notary.” 

“You copied them yourself?” 

“Yes, sir, with my own hand,” and the man held 
up that member as if to call it as a witness to his 
truth. 

“I should have preferred to have had the copying 


200 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 

done by a typist accredited by the county clerk,” said 
Mr. Clark coolly. 

Hapgood flushed angrily. 

“If you don’t believe me — ” he began, but Mr. 
Clark held up a warning finger. 

“It’s always wise to follow the custom in such 
cases,” he observed. 

Hapgood, finding himself in the wrong, leaned 
over Mr. Clark’s shoulder and pointed eagerly to 
the notary’s signature. 

“Henry Holden — that’s the notary — that’s him,” 
he repeated several times insistently. 

Mr. Clark nodded and read the papers slowly 
aloud so that his sisters might hear their contents. 
They recited the marriage at Uniontown, the county 
seat of Fayette County, Pennsylvania, on the fifteenth 
day of December, i860, of Emily Leonard to Ed- 
ward Smith. 

“There you are,” insisted Hapgood loudly. 
“That’s her; that’s the grandmother of Mary here.” 

“You’re sure of that?” 

“Here’s the record of the birth of Jabez, son of 
Edward and Emily (Leonard) Smith two years later, 
and the record of his marriage to my sister and the 
record of the birth of Mary. After I got the mar- 
riage of this Emily straightened out the rest was 
easy. We had it right in the family.” 

The two sisters gazed at each other aghast. The 
man was so assertive and coarse, and the child was 
so far from gentle that it seemed impossible that she 
could be of their own blood. Still, they remem- 
bered that surroundings have greater influence than 


UNCLE DAN’S RESEARCHES 201 


inheritance, so they held their peace, though Miss 
Maria stretched out her hand to Mary. Mary 
stared at it but made no move to take it. 

“Your records look as if they might be correct,” 
said Mr. Clark, an admission greeted by Hapgood 
with a pleased smile and a complacent rub of the 
hands; “but,” went on the old gentleman, “I see 
nothing here that would prove that this Emily Leon- 
ard was our cousin.” 

“But your nephew, Stanley, wrote you that he had 
found that your Emily had removed to the neighbor- 
hood of Pittsburg.” 

“That’s true,” acknowledged the elder man,' bend- 
ing his head, “but Emily Leonard isn’t an unusual 
name.” 

“O, she’s the one all right,” insisted Hapgood 
bluffly. 

“Further, your record doesn’t state the names of 
this Emily Leonard’s parents.” 

Hapgood tossed back the unruly lock of hair. 

“I ought to have gone back one step farther,” he 
conceded. “I might have known you’d ask that.” 

“Naturally.” 

“I’ll send to the county clerk and get that straight- 
ened out.” 

“It might be well,” advised Mr. Clark mildly. 
“One other point prevents my acceptance of these 
documents as proof that your niece belongs to our 
family. Neither the investigator whom we had 
working on the case nor my nephew have ever told 
us the date of birth of our Emily Leonard. We can, 
of course, obtain that, if it is not already in my 


202 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 


nephew’s possession, but without it we can’t be sure 
that our cousin was of marriageable age on Decem- 
ber fifteenth, i860.” 

It was Mr. Clark’s turn to rub his hands together 
complacently as Hapgood looked more and more dis- 
comfited. 

“In fact, my dear sir,” Mr. Clark continued, “you 
have proved nothing except that some Emily Leonard 
married a man named Smith on the date named.” 

He tapped the papers gently with a thin fore- 
finger and returned them to their owner, who began 
to bluster. 

“I might have known you’d put up a kick,” he ex- 
claimed. 

“I live, when I’m at home, in Arkansas,” replied 
Mr. Clark softly, “and Arkansas is so near Missouri 
that I have come to belong to the brotherhood who 
‘have to be shown.’ ” 

Hapgood greeted this sally with the beginning of 
a snarl, but evidently thought it the part of discretion 
to remain friendly with the people he wanted to per- 
suade. 

“I seem to have done this business badly,” he said, 
“but I’ll send back for the rest of the evidence and 
you’ll have to admit that Mary’s the girl you need to 
complete your family tree.” 

“Come here, dear,” Miss Clark called to Mary in 
her quiet voice. “Are your father and mother 
alive ?” 

“Father is,” she thought the child answered, but 
her reply was interrupted by Hapgood’s loud voice, 
saying, “She’s an orphan, poor kid. Pretty tough 


UNCLE DAN’S RESEARCHES 203 

just to have an old bachelor uncle to look after yer, 
ain’t it?” 

The younger Miss Clark stepped to the window 
to pull down the shade while the couple were still 
within the yard and she saw the man give the girl 
a shake and the child rub her arm as if the touch 
had been too rough for comfort. 

“Poor little creature! I can’t say I feel any af- 
fection for her, but she must have a hard time with 
that man 1” 

The interview left Mr. Clark in a disturbed state 
in spite of the calmness he had assumed in talking 
with Hapgood. He walked restlessly up and down 
the room and at last announced that he was going 
to the telegraph office. 

“I might as well wire Stanley to send us right off 
the date of Emily Leonard’s birth, and, just as soon 
as he finds it, the name of the man she married.” 

“If she did marry,” interposed Miss Maria. 
“Some of our family don’t marry,” and she humor- 
ously indicated the occupants of the room by a wave 
of her knitting needles. 

At that instant the doorbell rang, and the maid 
brought in a telegram. 

“It’s from Stanley,” murmured Mr. Clark. 

“What a strange co-incidence,” exclaimed the 
elder Miss Clark. 

“What does he say. Brother?” eagerly inquired 
the younger Miss Clark. 

“ ‘Emily married a man named Smith,’ ” Mr. 
Clark read slowly. 

“Is that all he says?” 


204 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 


“Every word.” 

“Dear boy I I suppose he thought we’d like to 
know as soon as he found out!” and Miss Eliza’s 
thoughts flashed away to the nephew she loved, for- 
getting the seriousness of the message he had sent. 

“The information seems to have come at an ap- 
propriate time,” commented Mr. Clark grimly. 

“It must be true, then,” sighed Miss Maria; “that 
Mary belongs to us.” 

“We don’t know at all if Hapgood’s Emily is our 
Emily, even if they did both marry Smiths,” insisted 
Mr. Clark stoutly, his obstinacy reviving. “I shall 
send a wire to Stanley at once asking for the dates 
of Emily’s birth and marriage. He must have them 
both by this time; why on earth doesn’t he send full 
information and not such a measly telegram as this 1” 
and the old gentleman put on his hat and took his 
cane and stamped off in a rage to the Western Union 
office. 

The sisters left behind gazed at each other for- 
lornly. 

“She certainly is an unprepossessing child,” mur- 
mured Miss Maria, “but don’t you think, under the 
circumstances, that we ought to ask her to pay us a 
visit?” 

Miss Clark the elder contemplated her knitting for 
a noticeable interval before she answered. 

“I don’t see any ‘ought’ about it,” she replied at 
last, “but I think it would be kind to do so.” 

Meanwhile Mr. Clark, stepping into the tele- 
graph office, met Mr. Hapgood coming out. That 
worthy looked somewhat startled at the encounter, 


UNCLE DAN’S RESEARCHES 


205 


but pulled himself together and said cheerfully “Just 
been sending off a wire about our matter.” 

When the operator read Mr. Clark’s telegram a 
few minutes later he said to himself wonderingly, 
“Emily Leonard sure is the popular lady!” 

Mr. Clark was not at all pleased with his sister’s 
proposal that they invite Mary Smith to make them 
a visit. 

“It will look to Hapgood as if we thought his story 
true,” he objected, when they suggested the plan the 
next morning. “I don’t believe it is true, even if our 
Emily did marry a Smith, according to Stanley.” 

“I don’t believe it is, either,” answered Miss 
Maria dreamily. “A great many people marry 
Smiths.” 

“They have to ; how are they to do anything else ?” 
inquired the old gentleman testily. “There is such 
a lot of them you can’t escape them. We’re talking 
about your name, ladies,” he continuued as Dorothy 
and her mother came in, and then he related the 
story of Hapgood’s visit and the possibility that 
Mary^ might prove to belong to them. 

“Do you think he honestly believes that she’s the 
missing heir?” Mrs. Smith asked. 

The ladies looked uncertain but there was no 
doubt in their brother’s mind. 

“Not for a moment of time do I think he does,” 
he shouted. 

“But what would be his object? Why should he 
try to thrust the child into a perfectly strange 
family?” 

The elder Miss Clark ventured a guess. 


2o6 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 

“He may want to provide for her future if she’s 
really an orphan, as he says.” 

“I don’t believe she is an orphan. Before her 
precious uncle drowned her reply with one of his 
roars I distinctly heard her say that her father was 
alive,” retorted the exasperated Mr. Clark. 

“The child would be truly fortunate to have all of 
you dear people to look after her,” Mrs. Smith 
smiled, “but if her welfare isn’t his reason, what 
is?” 

“I believe it has something to do with that piece 
of land,” conjectured Mr. Clark. “He never said a 
word about it to-night. That’s a bad sign. He 
wants that land and he’s made up his mind to have it 
and this has something to do with it.” 

“How could it have?” inquired Mrs. Smith. 

“This is all I can think of. Before we can sell 
that land or any of our land we must have the con- 
sent of all the living heirs or else the title isn’t good, 
as you very well know. Now Emily Leonard and 
her descendants are the only heirs missing. This 
man says that the child, Mary, is Emily Leonard’s 
grandchild and that Emily and her son, the child’s 
father, are dead. That would mean that if w^e 
wanted to sell that land we’d be obliged to have the 
signatures of my sisters and my nephew, Stanley, and 
myself, and also of the guardian of this child. Of 
course Hapgood will say he’s the child’s guardian. 
Do you suppose, Mrs. Smith, that he’s going to sign 
any deed that gives you that land? Not much! 
He’ll say it’s for the child’s best interests that the 
land be not sold now, because it contains valuable 


UNCLE DAN’S RESEARCHES 207 

clay or whatever it is he thinks he has found there. 
Then he’ll offer to buy the land himself and he’ll be 
willing enough to sign the deed then.” 

“But we might not be,” interposed Miss Maria. 

“I should say not,” returned her brother emphat- 
ically, “but he’d probably make a lot of trouble for 
us and be constantly appealing to us on the ground 
that we ought to sell the land for the child’s good — 
or he might even say for Stanley’s good or our good, 
the brazen, persistent animal.” 

“Brother,” remonstrated Miss Maria. “You for- 
get that you may be speaking of the uncle of our lit- 
tle cousin.” 

“Little cousin nothing!” retorted Mr. Clark 
fiercely. “It’s all very nice for the Mortons to find 
that that charming girl who takes care of the Bel- 
gian baby is a relative. This is a very different 
proposition! However, I suppose you girls — ” 
meaning by this term the two ladies of more than 
seventy — “won’t be happy unless you have the young- 
ster here, so you might as well send for her, but you’d 
better have the length of her visit distinctly under- 
stood.” 

“We might say a week,” suggested Miss Eliza 
hesitatingly. 

“Say a week, and say it emphatically,” approved 
her brother, and trotted off to his study, leaving the 
ladies to compose, with Mrs. Smith’s help, a note 
that would not be so cordial that Brother would for- 
bid its being sent, but that would nevertheless give a 
hint of their kindly feeling to the forlorn child, so 
roughly cared for by her strange uncle. 


2o8 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 


Mary Smith went to them, and made a visit that 
could not be called a success in any way. She was 
painfully conscious of the difference between her 
clothes and the Ethels’ and Dorothy’s and Della’s, 
though why theirs seemed more desirable she could 
not tell, since her own were far more elaborate. 
The other girls wore middy blouses constantly, even 
the older girls, Helen and Margaret, while her 
dresses were of silk or some other delicate material 
and adorned with many ruffles and much lace. 

She was conscious, too, of a difference between her 
manners and theirs, and she could not understand 
why. In her heart, she liked theirs better, since they 
were so gentle as to seem to have no spirit at all, ac- 
cording to her views. She was always uncomfort- 
able when she was with them and her efforts to be at 
ease caused her shyness to go to the other extreme 
and made her manners rough and Impertinent. 

Mrs. Smith found her crying one day, when she 
came upon her suddenly In the hammock on the 
Clarks’ veranda. 

“Can I help?” she asked softly, leaning over the 
small figure whose every movement Indicated pro- 
test. 

“No, you can’t,” came back the fierce retort. 
“You’re one of ’em. You don’t know.” 

“Don’t know what?” 

“How I feel. Nobody likes me. Miss Clark 
just told me to go out of her room.” 

“Why were you In her room?” 

“Why, shouldn’t I go into her room? When I 
woke up this morning I made up my mind I’d do my 


UNCLE DAN’S RESEARCHES 209 

best to be nice all day long. They’re so old I don’t 
know what to talk to ’em about, but I made up my 
mind I’d stick around ’em even if I didn’t know what 
to say. Right after breakfast they always go up- 
stairs — I think it’s to be rid of me — and they don’t 
come down for an hour, and then they bring down 
their knitting and their embroidery and they sit 
around all day long except when that Belgian baby 
that lives at your house comes in — then they get up 
and try to play with her.” 

Mrs. Smith smiled, remembering the efforts of the 
two old ladies to play with “Ayleesabet.” Mary no- 
ticed the smile. 

“They do look fools, don’t they?” she cried ea- 
gerly. 

“I think they look very dear and sweet when they 
are playing with Ayleesabet. I was not smiling at 
them but because I sympathized with their enjoy- 
ment of the baby.” 

“Well, I made up my mind they needn’t think they 
had to stay upstairs because I wasn’t nice; I’d go up- 
stairs and be nice. So I went upstairs to Miss 
Maria’s room and walked in.” 

“Walked right in? Without knocking?” 

“I walked right in. She was sitting in front of 
that low table she has with the looking glass and all 
the bottles and boxes on it. Her hair was down her 
back — what there was of it — and she was doing up 
her switch.” 

Mrs. Smith was so aghast at this intrusion and at 
the injured tone in which it was told that she had no 
farther inclination to smile. 

77 


210 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 


“I said, ‘I thought Pd come up and sit with you a 
while,’ and she said, ‘Leave the room at once, Mary,’ 
just like that. She was as mad as she could be.” 

“Do you blame her?” 

“Why should she be mad, when I went up there to 
be nice to her? She’s an old cat!” 

“Dear child, come and sit on this settee with me 
and let’s talk it over.” 

Mrs. Smith put her arm over the shaking shoul- 
ders of the angry girl and drew her toward her. 
After an instant’s stiffening against it Mary admit- 
ted to herself that it was pleasant; she didn’t wonder 
Dorothy was sweet if her mother did this often. 

“Now we’re comfortable,” said Mrs. Smith. 
“Tell me, dear, aren’t there some thoughts in your 
mind that you don’t like to tell to any one? 
thoughts that seem to belong just to you yourself? 
Perhaps they’re about God; perhaps they’re about 
people you love, perhaps they’re about your own 
feelings — but they seem too private and sacred for 
you to tell any one. They’re your own, ownest 
thoughts.” 

Mary nodded. 

“Do you remember your mother?” 

Mary nodded again. 

“Sometimes when you recall how she took you in 
her arms and cuddled you when you were hurt, and 
how you loved her and she loved you I know you 
think thoughts that you couldn’t express to any one 
else.” 

Mary gave a sniff that hinted of tears. 

“Everybody has an inner life that is like a church. 


UNCLE DAN’S RESEARCHES 21 1 


You know you wouldn’t think of running into a 
church and making a noise and disturbing the wor- 
shippers. It’s just so with people’s minds; you can’t 
rush in and talk about certain things to any one — the 
things that he considers too sacred to talk about.” 

“How are you going to tell?” 

Mrs. Smith drew a long breath. How was she to 
make this poor, untutored child understand. 

“You have to tell by your feelings;” she answered 
slowly. “Some people are more reserved than 
others. I believe you are reserved.” 

“Me?” asked Mary wonderingly. 

“It wouldn’t surprise me if there were a great 
many things that you might have talked about with 
your mother, if she had lived, but that you find it 
hard to talk about with your uncle.” 

Mary nodded. 

“He’s fierce,” she commented briefly. 

“If he should begin to talk to you about some of 
the tender memories that you have of your mother, 
for instance, it might be hard for you to answer him. 
You’d be apt to think that he was coming into your 
own private church.” 

“I see that,” the girl answered; “but,” returning 
to the beginning of the conversation, “I didn’t want 
to talk secrets with Miss Maria ; I just wanted to be 
nice.” 

“Just in the same way that people have thoughts 
of their very own that you mustn’t intrude on, so 
there are reserves in their habits that you mustn’t 
intrude on. Every one has a right to freedom from 
intrusion. I insist on it for myself; my daughter 


212 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 


never enters my bedroom without knocking. I pay 
her the same respect; I always tap at her door and 
wait for her answer before I enter.” 

“Would you be mad if she went into your room 
without knocking?” 

“I should be sorry that she was so inconsiderate 
of my feelings. She might, perhaps, interrupt me at 
my toilet. I should not like that.” 

“Is that what I did to Miss Maria?” 

“Yes, dear, it was. You don’t know Miss Maria 
well, and yet you opened the door of her private 
room and went in without being invited.” 

“I’m sorry,” she said briefly. 

“I’m sure you are, now you understand why it 
wasn’t kind.” 

“I wish she knew I meant to be nice.” 

“Would you like to have me tell her? I think 
she’ll understand there are some things you haven’t 
learned for you haven’t a mother to teach you.” 

“Uncle Dan says maybe I’ll have to live with the 
old ladies all the time, so they might as well know I 
wasn’t trying to be mean,” she whispered resignedly. 

“I’ll tell Miss Maria, then, and perhaps you and 
she will be better friends from now on because she’ll 
know you want to please her. And now, I came 
over to tell you that the U. S. C. is going into New 
York to-day to see something of the Botanical Gar- 
den and the Arboretum. I’m going with them and 
they’d be glad to have you go, too.” 

“They won’t be very glad, but I’d like to go,” re- 
sponded the girl, her face lighted with the nearest ap- 
proach to affection Mrs. Smith ever had seen upon it. 


CHAPTER XV 


FUR AND FOSSILS 

W HEN the Club gathered at the station to go 
into town Mary was arrayed in a light blue 
satin dress as unsuitable for her age as it was for the 
time of day and the way of traveling. The other 
girls were dressed in blue or tan linen suits, neat and 
plain. Secretly Mary thought their frocks were not 
to be named in the same breath with hers, but once 
w^hen she had said something about the simplicity of 
her dress to Ethel Blue, Ethel had replied that Helen 
had learned from her dressmaking teacher that 
dresses should be suited to the wearer’s age and occu- 
pation, and that she thought her linen blouses and 
skirts were entirely suitable for a girl of fourteen 
who was a gardener when she wasn’t in school. 

This afternoon Dorothy had offered her a pongee 
dust coat when she stopped at the Smiths’ on her 
way to the cars. 

“Aren’t you afraid you’ll get that pretty silk all 
cindery?” she asked. 

Mary realized that Dorothy thought her not ap- 
propriately dressed for traveling, but she tossed her 
head and said, “O, I like to wear something good 
looking when I go Into New York.” 

One of the purposes of the expedition was to see 
at the Museum of Natural History some of the fossil 
leaves and plants about which the Mortons had heard 
213 


214 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 

from Lieutenant and Captain Morton who had found 
several of them themselves in the course of their 
travels. 

At the Museum they gathered around the stones 
and examined them with the greatest interest. 
There were some shells, apparently as perfect as 
when they were turned into stone, and others repre- 
sented only by the moulds they had left when they 
crumbled away. There were ferns, the delicate 
fronds showing the veining that strengthened the 
leaflets when they danced in the breeze of some pre- 
historic morning. 

“It’s wonderful!” exclaimed the Ethels, and Mary 
asked, “What happened to it?” 

“I thought some one would ask that,” replied Mrs. 
Smith, “so I brought these verses by Mary Branch 
to read to you while we stood around one of these 
ancient rocks.” 

THE PETRIFIED FERN 

“In a valley, centuries ago 

Grew a little fern-leaf, green and slender, 

Veining delicate and fibers tender; 

Waving when the wind crept down so low. 

Rushes tall and moss and grass grew round it. 

Playful sunbeams darted in and found it. 

Drops of dew stole in by night and crowned it, 

But no foot of man e’er trod that way; 

Earth was young and keeping holiday. 

“Monster fishes swam the silent main ; 

Stately forests waved their giant branches. 

Mountains hurled their snowy avalanches 


FUR AND FOSSILS 


215, 


Mammoth creatures stalked across the plain; 

Nature revelled in grand mysteries, 

But the little fern was not of these, 

Did not number with the hills and trees; 

Only grew and waved its wild sweet way. 

No one came to note it day by day. 

“Earth, one time, put on a frolic mood. 

Heaved the rocks and changed the mighty motion 
Of the deep, strong currents of the ocean ; 

Moved the plain and shook the haughty wood 
Crushed the little fern in soft, moist clay, — 

Covered it and hid it safe away. 

O, the long, long centuries since that day! 

O, the changes! O, life’s bitter cost. 

Since that useless little fern was lost! 

“Useless? Lost? There came a thoughtful man 
Searching Nature’s secrets, far and deep; 

From a fissure in a rocky steep 
He withdrew a stone, o’er which there ran 
Fairy pencilings, a quaint design, 

Veinings, leafage, fibers clear and fine. 

And the fern’s life lay in every line! 

So, I think, God hides some souls away. 

Sweetly to surprise us, the last day.” 

From the Museum the party went to the Bronx 
where they first took a long walk through the Zoo. 
How Mary wished that she did not have on a pale 
blue silk dress and high heeled shoes as she dragged 
her tired feet over the gravel paths and stood watch- 
ing Gunda, the elephant, ‘‘weaving” back and forth 
on his chain, and the tigers and leopards keeping up 


2i6 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 


their restless pacing up and down their cages, and the 
monkeys, chattering hideously and snatching through 
the bars at any shining object worn by their visitors I 
It was only because she stepped back nimbly that 
she did not lose a locket that attracted the attention 
of an ugly imitation of a human being. 

The herds of large animals pleased them all. 

‘‘How kind it is of the keepers to give these crea- 
tures companions and the same sort of place to live in 
that they are accustomed to,” commented Ethel 
Brown. 

“Did you know that this is one of the largest herds 
of buffalo in the United States?” asked Tom, who, 
with Della, had joined them at the Museum. 
“Father says that when he was young there used to 
be plenty of buffalo on the western plains. The 
horse-car drivers used to wear coats of buffalo skin 
and every new England farmer had a buffalo robe. 
It was the cheapest fur in use. Then the railroads 
went over the plains and there was such a destruction 
of the big beasts that they were practically extermi- 
nated. They are carefully preserved now.” 

“The prairie dogs always amuse me,” said Mrs. 
Smith. “Look at that fellow! Every other one is 
eating his dinner as fast as he can but this one is 
digging with his front paws and kicking the earth 
away with his hind paws with amazing industry.” 

“He must be a convict at hard labor,” guessed 
Roger. 

“Or the Mayor of the Prairie Dog Town setting 
an example to his constituents,” laughed James. 

The polar bear was suffering from the heat and 


FUR AND FOSSILS 


217 


nothing but the tip of his nose and his eyes were to be 
seen above the water of his tank where he floated 
luxuriously in company with two cakes of ice. 

The wolves and the foxes had dens among rocks 
and the wild goats stood daintily on pinnacles to see 
what was going on at a distance. No one cared 
much for the reptiles, but the high flying cage for 
birds kept them beside it for a long time. 

Across the road they entered the grounds of the 
Arboretum and passed along a narrow path beside a 
noisy brook under heavy trees, until they came to a 
grove of tall hemlocks. With upturned heads they 
admired these giants of the forest and then passed 
on to view other trees from many climes and coun- 
tries. 

“Here’s the Lumholtz pine that father wrote me 
about from Mexico,” cried Ethel Blue, whose father. 
Captain Morton, had been with General Funston at 
Vera Cruz. “See, the needles hang down like a 
spray, just as he said. You know the wood has a 
peculiar resonance and the Mexicans make musical 
instruments of it.” 

“It’s a graceful pine,” approved Ethel Brown. 
“What a lot of pines there are.” 

“We are so accustomed about here to white pines 
that the other kinds seem strange, but in the South 
there are several kinds,” contributed Dorothy. 
“The needles of the long leaf pine are a foot long 
and much coarser than these white pine needles. 
Don’t you remember, I made some baskets out of 
them?” 

The Ethels did remember. 


2i8 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 


“Their green is yellower. The tree is full of 
resin and it makes the finest kind of kindling.” 

“Is that what the negroes call ‘light wood’ ?” asked 
Della. 

“Yes, that’s light wood. In the fields that haven’t 
been cultivated for a long time there spring up what 
they call In the South ‘old field pines’ or ‘loblolly 
pines.’ They have coarse yellow green needles, too, 
but they aren’t as long as the others. There are 
three needles in the bunch.” 

“Don’t all the pines have three needles In the 
bunch?” asked Margaret. 

“Look at this white pine,” she said, pulling down 
a bunch off a tree they were passing. “It has five; 
and the ‘Table Mountain pine’ has only two.” 

“Observant little Dorothy!” exclaimed Roger. 

“O, I know more than that,” laughed Dorothy. 
“Look hard at this white pine needle; do you see, it 
has three sides, two of them white and one green? 
The loblolly needle has only two sides, though the 
under Is so curved that it looks like two; and the 
‘Table Mountain’ has two sides.” 

“What’s the use of remembering all that?” de- 
manded Mary sullenly. 

Dorothy, who had been dimpling amusedly as she 
delivered her lecture, flushed deeply. 

“I don’t know,” she admitted. 

“We like to hear about It because we’ve been gar- 
dening all summer and anything about trees or 
plants interests us,” explained Tom politely, though 
the way In which Mary spoke seemed like an attack 
on Dorothy. 


FUR AND FOSSILS 


219 


“I’ve always found that everything I ever learned 
was useful at some time or other,” James maintained 
decidedly. “You never can tell when this informa- 
tion that Dorothy has given us may be just what we 
need for some purpose or other.” 

“It served Dorothy’s purpose just now when she 
interested us for a few minutes telling about the dif- 
ferent kinds,” insisted Ethel Blue, but Mary walked 
on before them with a toss of her head that meant 
“It doesn’t interest me.” 

Dorothy looked at her mother, uncertain whether 
to take it as a joke or to feel hurt. Mrs. Smith 
smiled and shook her head almost imperceptibly and 
Dorothy understood that it was kindest to say noth- 
ing more. 

They chatted on as they walked through the Bo- 
tanical Gardens and exclaimed over the wonders of 
the hothouses and examined the collections of the 
Museum, but the edge had gone from the afternoon 
and they were not sorry to find themselves on the 
train for Rosemont. Mary sat with Mrs. Smith. 

“I really was interested in what Dorothy told 
about the pines,” she whispered as the train rumbled 
on; “I was mad because I didn’t know anything that 
would interest them, too.” 

“I dare say you know a great many things that 
would interest them,” replied Mrs. Smith. “Some 
day you must tell me about the most interesting thing 
you ever saw in all your life and we’ll see if it won’t 
interest them.” 

“That was in a coal mine,” replied Mary 
promptly. “It was the footstep of a man thousands 


220 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 


and thousands of years old. It made you wonder 
what men looked like and how they lived so long 
ago.” 

“You must tell us all about it, some time. It will 
make a good addition to what we learned to-day 
about the fossils.” 

When the Mortons reached home they found Mr. 
Emerson waiting for them at their house. 

“I’ve a proposal to make to these children, with 
your permission, Marion,” he said to his daughter. 

“Say on, sir,” urged Roger. 

“Mr. Clark is getting very nervous about this man 
Hapgood. The man is beginning to act as if he, as 
the guardian of the child, had a real claim on the 
Clark estate, and he becomes more and more irri- 
tating every day. They haven’t heard from Stanley 
for several days. He hasn’t answered either a let- 
ter or a telegram that his uncle sent him and the old 
ladies are working themselves into a great state of 
anxiety over him. I tell them that he has been mov- 
ing about all the time and that probably neither the 
letter nor the wire reached him, but Clark vows that 
Hapgood has intercepted them and his sisters are 
sure the boy is ill or has been murdered.” 

“Poor creatures,” smiled Mrs. Morton sympa- 
thetically. “Is there anything you can do about it?” 

“I told Clark a few minutes ago that I’d go out 
to western Pennsylvania and hunt up the boy and 
help him run down whatever clues he has. Clark 
was delighted at the offer — said he didn’t like to go 
himself and leave his sisters with this man roaming 
around the place half the time.” 


FUR AND FOSSILS 


221 


“It was kind of you. IVe no doubt Stanley is 
working it all out well, but, boy-like, he doesn’t 
realize that the people at home want to have him re- 
port to them every day.” 

“My proposal is, Marion, that you lend me these 
children, Helen and the Ethels and Roger, for a few 
days’ trip.” 

“Wow, wow I” rose a shout of joy. 

“Or, better still, that you come, too, and bring 
Dicky.” 

Mrs. Morton was not a sailor’s wife for nothing. 

“I’ll do it,” she said promptly. “When do you 
want us to start?” 

“Can you be ready for an early morning train 
from New York?” 

“We can!” was the instant reply of every person 
in the room. 


CHAPTER XVI 


FAIRYLAND 


LL day long the train pulled its length across 



across the state of Pennsylvania, climbing 
mountains and bridging streams and piercing tunnels. 
All day long Mr. Emerson’s party was on the alert, 
dashing from one side to the other of the car to see 
some beautiful vista or to look down on a brook 
brawling a hundred feet below the trestle that sup- 
ported them or waving their hands to groups of 
children staring open-mouthed at the passing train. 

“Pennsylvania is a beautiful state,” decided Ethel 
Brown as they penetrated the splendid hills of the 
Allegheny range. 

“Nature made it one of the most lovely states of 
the Union,” returned her grandfather. “Man has 
played havoc with it in spots. Some of the villages 
among the coal mines are hideous from the waste 
that has been thrown out for years upon a pile never 
taken away, always increasing. No grass grows on 
it, no children play on it, the hens won’t scratch on it. 
The houses of the miners turn one face to this ugli- 
ness and it is only because they turn toward the 
mountains on another side that the people are pre- 
served from the death of the spirit that comes to 
those who look forever on the unlovely.” 

“Is there any early history about here?” asked 


222 


FAIRYLAND 


223 

Helen, whose interest was unfailing in the story of 
her country. 

“The French and Indian Wars were fought in 
part through this land,” answered Mr. Emerson. 
“You remember the chief struggle for the continent 
lay between the English and the French. There 
were many reasons why the Indians sided with the 
French in Canada, and the result of the friendship 
was that the natives were supplied with arms by the 
Europeans and the struggle was prolonged for about 
seventy-five years.” 

“Wasn’t the attack on Deerfield during the 
French and Indian War?” asked Ethel Blue. 

“Yes, and there were many other such attacks.” 

“The French insisted that all the country west of 
the Alleghenies belonged to them and they disputed 
the English possession at every point. When Wash- 
ington was only twenty-one years old he was sent to 
beg the French not to interfere with the English, but 
he had a hard journey with no fortunate results. It 
was on this journey that he picked out a good posi- 
tion for a fort and started to build it. It was where 
Pittsburg now stands.” 

“That was a good position for a fort, where the 
Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers join to make the 
Ohio,” commended Roger. 

“It was such a good position that the French drove 
off the English workmen and finished the work them- 
selves. They called it Fort Duquesne and it became 
one of a string of sixty French forts extending from 
Quebec to New Orleans.” 

“Some builders!” commended Roger. 


224 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 

“Fort Duquesne was so valuable that the English 
sent one of their generals, Braddock, to capture it. 
Washington went with him on his staff, to show him 
the way.” 

“It must have been a long trip from the coast 
through all this hilly country.” 

“It was. They had to build roads and they were 
many weeks on the way.” 

“It was a different matter from the twentieth cen- 
tury transportation of soldiers by train and motor 
trucks and stages,” reminded Mrs. Morton. 

“When the British were very near Fort 
Duquesne,” continued Mr. Emerson, “the French 
sent out a small band, mainly Indians, to meet them. 
The English general didn’t understand Indian fight- 
ing and kept his men massed in the road where they 
were shot down in great numbers and he lost his own 
life. There’s a town named after him, on the site 
of the battle.” 

“Here it is,” and Helen pointed it out on the map 
in the railway folder. “It’s about ten miles from 
Pittsburg.” 

“Washington took command after the death of 
Braddock, and this was his first real military expe- 
rience. However, his heart was in the taking of 
Fort Duquesne and when General Forbes was sent 
out to make another attempt at capturing it Wash- 
ington commanded one of the regiments of Virginia 
troops.” 

“Isn’t there any poetry about it?” demanded Ethel 
Brown, who knew her grandfather’s habit of collect- 
ing historical ballads. 


FAIRYLAND 


225 


“Certainly there is. There are some verses on 
‘Fort Duquesne’ by Florus Plimpton written for the 
hundredth anniversary of the capture. 

“Did they have a great old fight to take the fort?” 
asked Roger. 

“No fight at all. Here’s what Plimpton says: — 

“So said: and each to sleep addressed his wearied limbs 
and mind, 

And all was hushed i’ the forest, save the sobbing of the 
wind. 

And the tramp, tramp, tramp of the sentinel, who started 
oft in fright 

At the shadows wrought ’mid the giant trees by the fitful 
camp-fire light. 

“Good Lord! what sudden glare is that that reddens all 
the sky. 

As though hell’s legions rode the air and tossed their torches 
high! 

Up, men! the alarm drum beats to arms! and the solid 
ground seems riven 

By the shock of warring thunderbolts in the lurid depth of 
heaven ! 

“O, there was clattering of steel and mustering in array. 
And shouts and wild huzzas of men, impatient of delay. 

As came the scouts swift-footed in — ‘They fly ! the foe ! they 
fly! 

They’ve fired the powder magazine and blown it to the 
sky.’ 

“All the English had to do was to walk in, put out 
the fire, repair the fort and re-name it.” 

78 


226 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 


“What did they call it?” 

“After the great statesman — Fort Pitt.” 

“That’s where ‘Pittsburg’ got its name, then! I 
never thought about its being in honor of Pitt!” ex- 
claimed Helen. 

“It is ‘Pitt’s City,’ ” rejoined her grandfather. 
“And this street,” he added somewhat later when 
they were speeding in a motor bus to a hotel near the 
park, “this street is Forbes Street, named after the 
British general. Somewhere there is a Bouquet 
Street, to commemorate another hero of the war.” 

“I saw ‘Duquesne Way’ marked on the map,” an- 
nounced Ethel Blue. 

On the following morning they awakened to find 
themselves opposite a large and beautiful park with 
a mass of handsome buildings rising impressively at 
the entrance. 

“It is Schenley Park and the buildings house the 
Carnegie Institute. We’ll go over them by and 
bye.” 

“It’s a library,” guessed Dicky, who was not too 
young to have the steelmaker’s name associated with 
libraries in his youthful mind. 

“It is a library and a fine one. There’s also a 
Music Hall and an art museum and a natural history 
museum. You’ll see more fossil ferns there, and the 
skeleton of a diplodocus — ” 

“A dip-what?” demanded Roger. 

“Diplodocus, with the accent on the plod\ one of 
the hugest animals that ever walked the earth. 
They found the bones of this monster almost com- 
plete in Colorado and wired them together so you 


FAIRYLAND 


227 

can get an idea of what really ‘big game’ was like in 
the early geological days.” 

“How long is he?” 

“If all the ten members of the U. S. C. were to 
take hold of hands and stretch along his length there 
would be space for four or five more to join the 
string.” 

“Where’s my hat?” demanded Roger. “I want 
to go over and make that fellow’s acquaintance in- 
stanter.” 

“When you go, notice the wall paintings,” said his 
mother. “They show the manufacture and uses of 
steel and they are considered among the finest things 
of their kind in America. Alexander, the artist, did 
them. You’ve seen some of his work at the Metro- 
politan Museum in New York.” 

“Pittsburg has the good sense to have a city organ- 
ist,” Mr. Emerson continued. “Every Sunday after- 
noon he plays on the great organ in the auditorium 
and the audience drifts in from the park and drifts 
out to walk farther, and in all several thousand peo- 
ple hear some good music in the course of the after- 
noon.” 

“There seem to be some separate buildings behind 
the Institute.” 

“The Technical Schools, and beyond them is the 
Margaret Morrison School where girls may learn 
crafts and domestic science and so on.” 

“It’s too bad it isn’t a clear day,” sighed Ethel 
Blue, as she rose from the table. 

“This is a bright day. Miss,” volunteered the 
waiter who handed her her unnecessary sunshade. 


228 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 


“You call this clear?” Mrs. Morton asked him. 

“Yes, madam, this is a bright day for Pittsburg.” 

When they set forth they shook their heads over 
the townsman’s idea of a clear day, for the sky was 
overcast and clouds of dense black smoke rolled to- 
gether from the two sides of the city and met over 
their heads. 

“It’s from the steel mills,” Mr. Emerson explained 
as he advised Ethel Brown to wipe off a smudge of 
soot that had settled on her cheek and warned his 
daughter that if she wanted to preserve the whiteness 
of her gloves she had better replace them by colored 
ones until she returned to a cleaner place. 

They were to take the afternoon train up the 
Monongahela River to the town from which Stanley 
Clark had sent his wire telling his uncle that “Emily 
Leonard married a man named Smith,” but there 
were several hours to devote to sightseeing before 
train time, and the party went over Schenley Park 
with thoroughness, investigated several of the “in- 
clines” which carried passengers from the river level 
to the top of the heights above, motored among the 
handsome residences and ended, on the way to the 
station, with a flying visit to the old blockhouse which 
is all that is left of Port Pitt. 

“So this is really a blockhouse,” Helen said slowly 
as she looked at the little two story building with its 
heavy beams. 

“There are the musket holes,” Ethel Brown 
pointed out. 

“This is really where soldiers fought before the 
Revolution !” 


FAIRYLAND 


229 


“It really is,” her mother assured her. “It is in 
the care of one of the historical societies now; that’s 
why it is in such good condition.” 

Roger had secured the tickets and had telephoned 
to the hotel at Brownsville for rooms so they took 
their places in the train with no misgivings as to pos- 
sible discomfort at night. Their excitement was be- 
ginning to rise, however, for two reasons. In the 
first place they had been quite as disturbed as Dorothy 
and her mother over the difficulties attending 
the purchase of the field and the Fitz-James Woods, 
and the later developments in connection with the 
man, Hapgood. Now that they were approaching 
the place where they knew Stanley Clark was work- 
ing out the clue they began to feel the thrill that 
comes over explorers on the eve of discovery. 

The other reason for excitement lay in the fact 
that Mr. Emerson had promised them some wonder- 
ful sights before they reached their destination. He 
had not told them what they were, although he had 
mentioned something about fairyland that had started 
an abundant flow of questions from Dicky. Natu- 
rally they were all alert to find out what novelty their 
eyes were to see. 

“I saw one novelty this afternoon,” said Roger. 
“When I stepped into that little stationery shop to 
get a newspaper I noticed in the rear a queer tin 
thing with what looked like cotton wool sticking 
against its back wall. I asked the woman who sold 
the papers what it was.” 

“Trust Roger for not letting anything pass him,” 
smiled Ethel Brown. 


230 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 

“That’s why I’m such a cyclopedia of accurate in- 
formation, ma’am,” Roger retorted. “She said it 
was a stove.” 

“With cotton wool for fuel?” laughed Ethel 
Blue. 

“It seems they use natural gas here for heating as 
well as cooking, and the woolly stuff was asbestos. 
The gas is turned on at the foot of the back wall and 
the asbestos becomes heated and gives off warmth 
but doesn’t burn.” 

“I stayed in Pittsburg once in a boarding house 
where the rooms were heated with natural gas,” said 
Mr. Emerson. “It made a sufficient heat, but you 
had to be careful not to turn the burner low just 
before all the methodical Pittsburgers cooked din- 
ner, for if you made it too low the flame might go 
out when the pressure was light.” 

“Did the opposite happen at night?” 

“It did. In the short time I was there the news- 
papers noted several cases of fires caused by people 
leaving their stoves turned up high at night and the 
flames bursting into the room and setting fire to some 
inflammable thing near at hand when the pressure 
grew strong after the good Pittsburgers went to 
bed.” 

“It certainly is useful,” commended Mrs. Morton. 
“A turn of the key and that’s all.” 

“No coal to be shovelled — think of it!” exclaimed 
Roger, who took care of several furnaces in winter. 
“No ashes to be sifted and carried away! The 
thought causes me to burst into song,” and he chanted 
ridicuously : — 


FAIRYLAND 


231 


“Given a tight tin stove, asbestos fluff, 

A match of wood, an iron key, and, puff. 

Thou, Natural Gas, wilt warm the Arctic wastes, 
And Arctic wastes are Paradise enough.” 

As the train drew out of the city the young peo- 
ple’s expectations of fairyland were not fulfilled. 

“I don’t see anything but dirt and horridness, 
Grandfather,” complained Ethel Brown. 

Mr. Emerson looked out of the window thought- 
fully for a moment. 

“True,” he answered, “it’s not yet dark enough 
for the magic to work.” 

“No wonder everything is sooty and grimy with 
those chimneys all around us throwing out tons and 
tons of soft coal smoke to settle over everything. 
Don’t they ever stop?” 

“They’re at it twenty-four hours a day,” returned 
her grandfather. “But night will take all the ugli- 
ness into its arms and hide it; the sordidness and 
griminess will disappear and fairyland will come 
forth for a playground. The ugly smoke will turn 
into a thing of beauty. The queer point of it all is,” 
he continued, shaking his head sadly, “fairyland is 
there all the time and always beautiful, only you can’t 
see it.” 

Dicky’s eyes opened wide and he gazed out of the 
window intent on peering into this mysterious in- 
visible playground. 

“Lots of things are like that,” agreed Roger. 
“Don’t you remember how those snowflakes we 
looked at under the magnifying glass on Ethel Blue’s 
birthday burst into magnificent crystals? You 


232 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 

wouldn’t think a handful of earth — ^just plain dirt — 
was pretty, would you? But it is. Look at it 
through a microscope and see what happens.” 

“But, Grandfather, if the beauty is there right now 
why can’t we see it?” insisted Ethel Brown. 

Mr. Emerson stared out of the window for a mo- 
ment. 

“That was a pretty necklace of beads you strung 
for Ayleesabet.” 

“We all thought they were beauty beads.” 

“And that was a lovely string of pearls that Mrs. 
Schermerhorn wore at the reception for which you 
girls decorated her house.” 

There could be no disagreement from that opinion. 

“Since Ayleesabet is provided with such beauties 
we shan’t have to fret about getting her anything else 
when she goes to her coming-out party, shall we ?” 

“What are you saying. Grandfather!” exclaimed 
Helen. “Of course Ayleesabet’s little string of 
beads can’t be compared with a pearl necklace !” 

“There you are!” retorted Mr. Emerson; “Helen 
has explained it. This fairyland we are going to 
see can’t be compared with the glory of the sun any 
more than Ayleesabet’s beads can be compared with 
Mrs. Schermerhorn’s pearls. We don’t even see 
the fairyland when the sun is shining but when the 
sun has set the other beauties become clear.” 

“O-o-o!” shouted Dicky, whose nose had been 
glued to the window in an effort to prove his grand- 
father’s statement; “look at that funny umbrella!” 

Everybody jumped to one window or another, and 
they saw in the gathering darkness a sudden blast of 


FAIRYLAND 


233 

flame and white hot particles shooting into the air 
and spreading out like an umbrella of vast size. 

“Look at it!” exclaimed the two Ethels, in a 
breath; “isn’t that beautiful! What makes it?” 

“The grimy steel mills of the daytime make the 
fairyland of night,” announced Mr. Emerson. 

Across the river they noticed suddenly that the 
smoke pouring from a chimney had turned blood red 
with tongues of vivid flame shooting through it like 
pulsing veins. There was no longer any black 
smoke. It had changed to heavy masses of living 
fire of shifting shades. Great ingots of steel sent 
the observers a white hot greeting or glowed more 
coolly as the train shot by them. Huge piles of 
smoking slag that had gleamed dully behind the mills 
now were veined with vivid red, looking like minia- 
ture volcanoes streaked with lava. 

It was sometimes too beautiful for words to de- 
scribe it suitably, and sometimes too terrible for an 
exclamation to do it justice. It created an excite- 
ment that was wearying, and when the train pulled 
into Brownsville it was a tired party that found its 
way to the hotel. 

As the children went off to bed Mr. Emerson 
called out “To-morrow all will be grime and dirt 
again; fairyland has gone.” 

“Never mind. Grandfather,” cried Ethel Brown, 
“we won’t forget that it is there just the same if 
only we could see it.” 

“And we’ll think a little about the splendiferous- 
ness of the sun, too,” called Helen from the eleva- 
tor. “I never thought much about it before.” 


CHAPTER XVII 


THE MISSING HEIRESS 

M r. EMERSON’S investigations proved that 
Stanley Clark had left Brownsville several 
days previously and had gone to Millsboro, farther 
up the Monongahela. 

He had left that as his forwarding address, the 
hotel clerk said. This information necessitated a 
new move at once, so the next morning, bright and 
early, Mr. Emerson led his party to the river where 
they boarded a little steamer scarcely larger than a 
motor boat. 

They were soon puffing away at a fair rate of 
speed against the sluggish current. The factories 
and huge steel plants had disappeared and the banks 
looked green and country-like as mile after mile 
slipped by. Suddenly Roger, who was sitting by 
the steersman’s wheel, exclaimed, “Why, look I 
there’s a waterfall in front of us.” 

So, indeed, there was, a wide fall stretching from 
shore to shore, but Roger, eyeing it suspiciously, 
added in an aggrieved tone, “But it’s a dam. Must 
be a dam. Look how straight it is.” 

“How on earth,” called Ethel Blue, “are we going 
to get over it?” 

“Jump up it the way Grandpa told me the salmon 
fishes do,” volunteered Dicky. 

234 


JHE MISSING HEIRESS 


235 


Everybody laughed, but Mr. Emerson declared 
that was just about what they were going to do. 
The boat headed in for one end of the dam and her 
passengers soon found themselves floating in a gran- 
ite room, with huge wooden doors closed behind 
them. The water began to boil around them, and 
as it poured into the lock from unseen channels the 
boat rose slowly. In a little while the Ethels cried 
that they could see over the tops of the walls, and 
in a few minutes more another pair of big gates 
opened in front of them and they glided into another 
chamber and out into the river again, this time above 
the “falls.” 

“I feel as if I had been through the Panama Ca- 
nal,” declared Ethel Blue. 

“That’s just the way its huge locks work,” said 
Mrs. Morton. “The next time your Uncle Roger 
has a furlough I hope it will be long enough for us 
to go down there and see it.” 

“I wonder,” asked Roger, “if there are many 
more dams like this on the Monongahela.” 

“There’s one about every ten miles,” volunteered 
the steersman. “Until the government put them 
in only small boats could go up the river. Now 
good sized ones can go all the way to Wheeling, 
West Virginia. If you want to, you can go by boat 
all the way from Wheeling to the Gulf of Mex- 
ico.” 

“The Gulf of Mexico,” echoed the two Ethels. 
Then they added, also together, “So you can!” 
and Ethel Brown said, “The Indians used to go 
from the upper end of Lake Chautauqua to the Gulf 


236 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 

in their canoes? When they got to Fort Duquesne 
it was easy paddling.” 

“What is that high wharf with a building on it 
overhanging the river?” asked Helen. 

“That’s a coal tipple,” said her grandfather. 
“Do you see on shore some low-lying houses and 
sheds? They are the various machinery plants and 
offices of the coal mine and that double row of small 
houses a quarter of a mile farther up is where the 
employes live.” 

As the boat continued up the river it passed many 
such tipples. They were now in the soft coal coun- 
try, the steersman said, and in due time they arrived 
at Millsboro, a little town about ten miles above 
Brownsville. 

Here Mr. Emerson made immediate inquiries 
about Stanley Clark, and found that he had gone on, 
leaving “Uniontown, Fayette County,” as his for- 
warding address. “That’s the county seat where 
Hapgood says he copied his records,” said Mr. 
Emerson. “I hope we shall catch young Clark 
there and get that matter straightened out.” 

As there was no train to Uniontown until the 
afternoon, Mr. Emerson engaged a motor car to 
take them to a large mine whose tipple they had 
passed on the way up. The Superintendent was a 
friend of the driver of the car and he willingly 
agreed to show them through. Before entering the 
mine he pointed out to them samples of coal which 
he had collected. Some had fern leaves plainly vis- 
ible upon their surfaces and others showed leaves 
of trees and shrubs. 


THE MISSING HEIRESS 


237 


“Faiiy pencilings, a quaint design, 

Veinings, leafage, fibers clear and fine,” 

quoted Ethel Blue softly, as she looked at them. 

Mrs. Morton stopped before a huge block of coal 
weighing several tons and said to her son, “Here’s 
a lump for your furnace, Roger.” 

“Phew,” said Roger. “Think of a furnace large 
enough to fit that lump! Do you get many of 
them?” he asked of the Superintendent. 

“We keep that,” said the Superintendent, “because 
it’s the largest single lump of coal ever brought out 
of this mine. Of course, we could get them if we 
tried to, but it’s easier to handle it in smaller pieces.” 

“What’th in that little houthe over there?” asked 
Dicky. “Theems to me I thee something whithing 
round.” 

“That’s the fan that blows fresh air into the mine 
so that the miners can breathe, and drives out the 
poisonous and dangerous gases.” 

“What would happen if the fan stopped running?” 
asked Ethel Brown. 

“Many things might happen,” said the Superin- 
tendent gravely. “Men might suffocate for lack of 
air, or an explosion might follow from the collection 
of the dreaded ‘fire damp’ ignited by some miner’s 
lamp.” 

“Fire damp?” repeated Mrs. Morton. “That is 
really natural gas, isn’t it?” 

“Yes, they’re both ‘marsh gas’ caused by the decay 
of the hug^ ferns and plants of the carboniferous 
age. Some of them hardened into coal and others 
rotted when they were buried, and the gas was caught 


238 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 

in huge pockets. It is gas from these great pockets 
that people use for heating and cooking all about 
here and even up into Canada.” 

Ethel Brown had been listening and the words 
“some of them hardened into coal” caught her ear. 
She went close to her grandfather’s side. 

“Tell me,” she said, “exactly what is coal and 
how did it get here ?” 

“What I want to know,” retorted Mr. Emerson, 
“is what brand of curiosity you have in your cra- 
nium, and how did it get there? Answer me that.” 

Ethel Brown laughed. 

“Let’s have a lecture,” she urged, “and,” hand- 
ing her grandfather a small lump of coal, “here’s 
your text.” 

Mr. Emerson turned the bit of coal over and 
over. 

“When I look at this little piece of black stone,” 
he said, “I seem to see dense forests filled with 
luxuriant foliage and shrubbery and mammoth trees 
under which move sluggish streams draining the 
swampy ground. The air is damp and heavy and 
warm.” 

“What about the animals?” 

“There are few animals. Most of them are wa- 
ter creatures, though there are a few that can live 
on land and in the water, too, and in the latter part 
of the coal-making period enormous reptiles crawled 
over the wet floor of the forest. Life is easy in all 
this leafy splendor and so is death, but no eye of 
iman is there to look upon it, no birds brighten the 
dense green of the trees, and the ferns and shrubs 


THE MISSING HEIRESS 


239 


have no flowers as we know them. The air Is heavy 
with carbon.” 

“Where was the coal?” 

“The coal wasn’t made yet. You know how the 
soil of the West Woods at home is deep with de- 
cayed leaves? Just imagine what soil would be if 
it were made by the decay of these huge trees and 
ferns! It became yards and yards deep and silt 
and water pressed It down and crushed from it al- 
most all the elements except the carbon, and it was 
transformed into a mineral, and that mineral Is 
coal.” 

“Coal? Our coal?” 

“Our coal. See the point of a fern leaf on this 
bit?” and he held out the piece of coal he had been 
holding. “That fern grew millions of years ago.” 

“Isn’t It delicate and pretty!” exclaimed Ethel 
Blue, as it reached her in passing from hand to 
hand, “and also not as clean as It once was!” she 
added ruefully, looking at her fingers. 

By way of preparation for their descent Into the 
mine each member of the party was given a cap on 
which was fastened a small open wick oil lamp. 
They did not light them, however, until they had 
all been carried a hundred feet down Into the earth 
in a huge elevator. Here they needed the Illumina- 
tion of the tiny lamps whose flicker made dancing 
shadows on the walls. 

Following the Superintendent their first visit was 
to the stable. 

“What Is a stable doing down here?” wondered 
Ethel Brown. 


240 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 

“Mules pull the small cars into which the miners 
toss the coal as they cut it out. These fellows prob- 
ably will never see the light of day again,” and their 
leader stroked the nose of the animal nearest him 
which seemed startled at his touch. 

“He’s almost blind, you see,” the Superintendent 
explained. “His eyes have adjusted themselves to 
the darkness and even these feeble lights dazzle 
him.” 

The girls felt the tears very near their eyelids 
as they thought of the fate of these poor beasts, 
doomed never to see the sun again or to feel the 
grass under their feet. 

“I once knew a mule who was so fond of music 
that he used to poke his head into the window near 
which his master’s daughter was playing on the 
piano,” said the Superintendent, who noticed their 
agitation and wanted to amuse them. “We might 
get up band concerts for these fellows.” 

“Poor old things, I believe they would like it!” 
exclaimed Helen. 

“This is a regular underground village,” com- 
mented Mrs. Morton, as they walked for a long 
distance through narrow passages until they found 
themselves at the heading of a drift where the men 
were working. 

“Is there any gas here?” asked the Superintend- 
ent, and when the miners said “Yes,” he lifted his 
hand light, which was encased in wire gauze, and 
thrust it upwards toward the roof and gave a grunt 
as it flickered near the top. 

There it was, the dreaded fire-damp, in a layer 



“ ‘ There are the musket holes,’ Ethel Brown pointed out ” 


[See p. 228] 


■ r 


/I 




• # • • 1 •‘^ • 


.‘T' _ 


» • f' 


i • >'* 


WK': ■Y-'^'- 

^ • ■ : ••■^ t ' ' t_ 

. ^ . -liMj 







. - . T •- ‘75,.-JS . *• - ' ♦ - • <•< 

p,.-::l . \,' ,:i-?ia*i ■ ^ ■;■• ; 

^ 'S' ■ • •> ■ ^ •• . . .- -■.' 

■' * ’ . '• iSf ■ -wi 


*r*- f • 


rj’ 


. i 

3v 


»« 




• r 

' r 


,4 V 


f . - 


. vj 


i k 


I / 


;* ' 


% 


■rf'' 


- i i y 

V r. -' ’ ' 


-'1 


■piLV 


«•- 


■v>. 


> i 


I • 


i 




\| ■ i'" * 






> 


■■ **' ‘ '■ 


}X.lr 


> ’ -e 


SJ; -ir' ^ 




I’i 


‘.l‘V‘ 
^ ■ ilvv r 

./ - r _‘r ■ ' 


€ 4 I' I • Y * '* 

^ ■ t1 V , 




?i,.W 

' • U V 


i ■ 

• -iv 

•-r-f ; 

I ’ i-i. . '■ '■.' -li- , ' 

. '■' ’Y -y.- 

, ■4' i' : >■<•'”■" '■ P ' 

■* VW i,..r . i, ,'d',P .«»• . ■'• 


4' 


t M 




■'lit / 





"J''' 

,. -'^4 


‘ . • J' f *« ; - • V V 




i‘i. '■- 




, mM} • 

Ji 



^ 

i 


% 

I « 






2^ 


• f. 


^WShW j - - 

•J; ' k-T''.' '.P V ;■' ; 

■' ‘t-T'y-Yi 

. ■ ■ <•>*.. * ..v*'' ’ -Ha. ..^} 

t - ri- ' '' V “ r ‘ ■; 

•' -. ^.;.p ■*'• - 





Y v-'U ■ 

-■■-•-'.liV :', 


i 





\ 




v« 



£*4 




* * * ' * * 







THE MISSING HEIRESS 


241 


above their heads. One touch of an open flame and 
there would be a terrible explosion, yet the miners 
^yere working undisturbed just beneath it with un- 
protected lamps on their caps. The visitors felt 
suddenly like recruits under fire — they were far from 
enjoying the situation but they did not want to seem 
alarmed. No one made any protest, but neither did 
any one protest when the Superintendent led the way 
to a section of the mine where there was no gas that 
they might see a sight which he assured them was 
without doubt wonderful. 

They were glad that they had been assured that 
there was no fire-damp here, for their leader lifted 
his lamp close to the roof. Ethel Blue made the 
beginning of an exclamation as she saw his arm 
rising, but she smothered her cry for her good sense 
told her that this experienced man would not en- 
danger the lives of himself or his guests. The coal 
had been taken out very cleanly, and above them 
they saw not coal but shale. 

“What is shale?” inquired Helen. 

“Hardened clay,” replied the Superintendent. 
“There were no men until long after the carbonifer- 
ous period when coal was formed, but just in this 
spot it must have happened that the soil that had 
gathered above the deposits of coal was very light 
for some reason or other. Above the coal there was 
only a thin layer of soft clay. One day a hunter 
tramped this way and left his autograph behind.” 

He held his lamp steadily upward, and there in 
the roof were the unmistakable prints of the soles 
of a man’s feet, walking. 

79 


242 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 

“It surely does look mightily as if your explana- 
tion was correct,” exclaimed Mr. Emerson, as he 
gazed at the three prints, in line and spaced as a 
walker’s would be. Their guide said that there 
had been six, but the other three had fallen after 
being exposed to the air. 

“I wish it hadn’t been such a muddy day,” sighed 
Ethel Blue. “The mud squeezed around so that his 
toe marks were filled right up.” 

“It certainly was a muddy day,” agreed Roger, 
“but I’m glad it was. If he had been walking on 
rocks we never should have known that he had 
passed this way a million or so years ago.” 

They were all so filled with interest that they 
were almost unwilling to go on in the afternoon, al- 
though Mr. Emerson promised them other sights 
around Uniontown, quite different from any they 
had seen yet. 

It was late in the afternoon when they ferried 
across the river in a boat running on a chain, and 
took the train for the seat of Fayette County. As 
the daylight waned they found themselves travelling 
through a country lighted by a glare that seemed to 
spread through the atmosphere and to be reflected 
back from the clouds and sky. 

“What is it?” Dicky almost whimpered, as he 
snuggled closer to his mother. 

“Ask Grandfather,” returned Mrs. Morton. 

“It’s the glare from the coke ovens,” answered 
Mr. Emerson. “Do you see those long rows of 
bee-hives? Those are ovens in which soft coal is 
being burned so that a certain ingredient called bi- 


THE MISSING HEIRESS 


243 


tumen may be driven off from it. What is left after 
that is done is a substance that looks somewhat like 
a dry sponge if that were gray and hard. It burns 
with a very hot flame and is invaluable in the smelt- 
ing of iron and the making of steel.” 

“That’s why they make so much here,” guessed 
Ethel Brown, who had been counting the ovens and 
was well up in the hundreds with plenty more in 
sight. “Here is where they make most of the iron 
and steel in the United States and they have to have 
coke for it.” 

“And you notice how conveniently the coal beds 
lie to the iron mines? Nature followed an efficiency 
program, didn’t she?” laughed Roger. 

“They turn out about twenty million tons of coke 
a year just around here,” Helen read from her guide- 
book, “and it is one of the two greatest coke burn- 
ing regions of the world!” 

“Where’s the other?” 

“In the neighborhood of Durham, England.” 

“It is a wonderful sight!” exclaimed Ethel Blue. 
“I never knew fire could be so wonderful and so 
different!” 

Mr. Emerson’s search for Stanley Clark seemed 
to be a stern chase and consequently a long one. 
Here again the hotel clerk told him that Mr. Clark 
had gone on, this time to Washington, the seat of 
Washington County. He was fairly sure that he 
was still there because he had received a letter from 
him just the day before asking that something he 
had left behind should be sent him to that point, 
which was done. 


244 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 


As soon as the Record Office was open in the 
morning Mr. Emerson and Roger went there. 

“We might as well check up on Hapgood’s in- 
vestigations,” said Mr. Emerson. “They may be 
all right, and he may be honestly mistaken in think- 
ing that his Emily is the Clarks’ Emily; or he may 
have faked some of his records. It won’t take us 
long to find out. Mr. Clark let me take his copy 
of Hapgood’s papers.” 

It was not a long matter to prove that Hapgood’s 
copy of the records was correct. Emily Leonard 
had married Edward Smith; their son, Jabez, had 
married a Hapgood and Mary was their child. 
Where Hapgood’s copy had been deficient was in his 
failing to record that this Emily Leonard was the 
daughter of George and Sabina Leonard, whereas 
the Clarks’ Emily was the daughter of Peter and 
Judith Leonard. 

“There’s Hapgood’s whole story knocked silly,” 
remarked Mr. Emerson complacently. 

“But it leaves us just where we were about the 
person the Clarks’ Emily married.” 

“Stanley wouldn’t have telegraphed that she mar- 
ried a Smith if he hadn’t been sure. He sent that 
wire from Millsboro, you know. He must have 
found something in that vicinity.” 

“I’m going to try to get him on the telephone to- 
night, and then we can join him in Washington to- 
morrow if he’ll condescend to stay in one spot for 
a few hours and not keep us chasing over the coun- 
try after him.” 

“That’s Jabez Smith over there now,” the clerk, 


THE MISSING HEIRESS 


245 

who had been Interested in their search, Informed 
them. 

“J^bez Smith!” repeated Roger, his jaw dropped. 

“Jabez Smith!” repeated Mr. Emerson. “Why, 
he’s dead!” 

“Jabez Smith? The Hapgood woman’s hus- 
band? Father of Mary Smith? He isn’t dead. 
He’s alive and drunk almost every day.” 

He Indicated a man leaning against the wall of 
the corridor and Mr. Emerson and Roger ap- 
proached him. 

“Don’t you know the Miss Clarks said they 
thought that Mary said her father was alive but her 
uncle interrupted her loudly and said she was ‘an 
orphan, poor kid’?” Roger reminded his grandfa- 
ther. 

“She’s half an orphan; her mother really is dead, 
the clerk says.” 

Jabez Smith acknowledged his identity and re- 
ceived news of his brother-in-law and his daughter 
with no signs of pleasure. 

“What scheming is Hapgood up to now?” he 
muttered crossly. 

“Do you remember what your grandfather and 
grandmother Leonards’ names were,” asked Mr. 
Emerson. 

The man looked at him dully, as if he wondered 
what trick there might be in the inquiry, but evi- 
dently he came to the conclusion that his new ac- 
quaintance was testing his memory, so he pulled 
himself together and after some mental searching 
answered, “George Leonard; Sabina Leonard.” 


246 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 

His hearers were satisfied, and left him still sup- 
porting the Court House wall with his person instead 
of his taxes. 

Stanley, the long pursued, was caught on the wire, 
and hailed their coming with delight. He said that 
he thought he had all the information he needed and 
that he had been planning to go home the next day, 
so they were just in time. 

“That’s delightful; he can go with us,” exclaimed 
Ethel Brown, and Helen and Roger looked espe- 
cially pleased. 

The few hours that passed before they met in 
Washington were filled with guesses as to whether 
Stanley had built up the family tree of his cousin 
Emily so firmly that it could not be shaken. 

“We proved this morning that Hapgood’s story 
was a mixture of truth and lies,” Mr. Emerson said, 
“but we haven’t anything to replace it. Our evi- 
dence is all negative.” 

“Stanley seems sure,” Roger reminded him. 

When Stanley met them at the station in Wash- 
ington he seemed both sure and happy. He shook 
hands with them all. 

“It is perfectly great to have you people here,” 
he said to Helen. 

“Have you caught Emily?” she replied, dimpling 
with excitement. 

“I have Emily traced backwards and forwards. 
Let’s go into the writing room of the hotel and you 
shall see right off how she stands.” 

They gathered around the large table and listened 
to the account of the young lawyer’s adventures. 


THE MISSING HEIRESS 


247 


He had had a lead that took him to Millsboro soon 
after he reached western Pennsylvania, but he missed 
the trail there and spent some time in hunting in 
surrounding towns before he came on the record 
in the Uniontown courthouse. 

“I certainly thought I had caught her then,” he 
confessed. “I thought so until I compared the ages 
of the two Emilies. I found that our Emily would 
have been only ten years old at the time the Union- 
town Emily married Edward Smith.” 

“Mr. Clark wired you to find out just that point.” 

“Did he? I never received the despatch. 
Hadn’t I told him the date of our Emily’s birth? 

“He has a crow to pick with you over that.” 

“Too bad. Well, I moseyed around some more, 
and the trail led me back to Millsboro again, where 
I ought to have found the solution in the first place 
if I had been more persevering. I came across an 
old woman in Millsboro who had been Emily Leon- 
ard’s bridesmaid when she married Julian Smith. 
That sent me off to the county seat and there I found 
it all set down in black and white ; — Emily Leonard, 
adopted daughter of Asa Wentworth and daughter 
of Peter and Judith (Clark) Leonard. There was 
everything I wanted.” 

“You knew she had been adopted by a Went- 
worth?” 

“I found that out before I left Nebraska.” 

“What was the date of the marriage?” 

“1868. She was eighteen. Two years later her 
only child, a son, Leonard, was born, and she 
died—” 


248 ETHEL MORTON’S ENTERPRISE 


“Her son Leonard ! Leonard Smith !” exclaimed 
Mrs. Morton suddenly. “Do you suppose — ” she 
hesitated, looking at her father. 

He raised his eyebrows doubtfully, then turning to 
Stanley he inquired : 

“You didn’t find out what became of this Leonard 
Smith, did you?” 

“I didn’t find any record of his marriage, but I 
met several men who used to know him. They 
said he became quite a distinguished musician, and 
that he married a Philadelphia woman.” 

“Did they know her name?” asked Mrs. Morton, 
leaning forward eagerly. 

“One of them said he thought it was Martin. 
Smith never came back here to live after he set 
forth to make his fortune, so they were a little 
hazy about his marriage and they didn’t know 
whether he was still alive.” 

“The name wasn’t Morton, was it?” 

The girls looked curiously at their mother, for 
she was crimson with excitement. Stanley could 
take them no farther, however. 

“Father,” Mrs. Morton said to Mr. Emerson, as 
the young people chattered over Stanley’s discov- 
eries, “I think I’d better send a telegram to Louise 
and ask her what her husband’s parents’ names were. 
Wouldn’t it be too strange if he should be the son 
of the lost Emily?” 

Mr. Emerson hurried to the telegraph office and 
sent an immediate wire to “Mrs. Leonard Smith, 
Rosemont, N. J. Wire names of your husband’s 
parents,” it read. 


THE MISSING HEIRESS 


249 


The answer came back before morning; — “Julian 
and Emily Leonard Smith.” 

“Now why In the wide world didn’t she remember 
that when we’ve done nothing but talk about Emily 
Leonard for weeks!” cried Mrs. Smith’s slster-In- 
law Impatiently. 

“I dare say she never gave them a thought; Leon- 
ard Smith’s mother died when he was born, Stanley 
says. How about the father, Stanley?” 

“Julian Smith? He died years ago. I saw his 
death record this morning.” 

“Then I don’t see but you’ve traced the missing 
heir right to your own next door neighbor, Stan- 
ley.” 

“It looks to me as If that was just what had hap- 
pened,” laughed the young lawyer. “Isn’t that 
jolly! It’s Dorothy whose guardian’s signature Is 
lacking to make the deed of the field valid when 
we sell It to her mother!” 

“It’s Dorothy who Is a part owner of FItz-James’s 
woods already!” cried the Ethels. 

Another telegram went to Rosemont at once. 
This one was addressed to “Miss Dorothy Smith.” 
It said, “Stanley welcomes you Into family. Con- 
gratulations from all on your good fortune,” and It 
was signed “The Travellers.” 


THE END 


The Ethel Morton Books 

By MABELL S. C. SMITH 


This series strikes a new note in the publication of books 
for girls. Fascinating descriptions of the travels and amus- 
ing experiences of our young friends are combined with a 
fund of information relating their accomplishment of things 
every girl wishes to know. 

In reading the books a girl becomes acquainted with 
many of the entertaining features of handcraft, elements 
of cooking, also of swimming, boating and similar pas- 
times. This information is so imparted as to hold the in- 
terest throughout. Many of the subjects treated are illus- 
trated by halftones and line engravings throughout the 
text 

LIST OF TITLES 
Ethel Morton at Chautauqua 
Ethel Morton and the Christmas Ship 
Ethel Morton’s Holidays 
Ethel Morton at Rose House 
Ethel Morton’s Enterprise 
Ethel Morton at Sweet Brier Lodge 

Price 6o cents per volume ; postpaid 

PUBLISHED BY 

The New York Book Company 

147 Fourth Avenue New York, N. Y. 



THE BOY GLOBE TROTTERS 

By ELBERT FISHER 

J2mo, Cloth. Many Illuatrations. 60c. per Volume 


This is a series of four books relating the adventures of two boys, who 
make a trip around the world, working their way as they go. They 
meet with various peoples having strange habits and customs, and their 
adventures form a medium for the introduction of much instructive 
matter relative to the character and industries of the cities and countries 
through which they pass. A description is given of the native sports 
of boys in each of the foreign countries through which they travel. The 
books are illustrated by decorative head and end pieces for each chapter, 
there being 36 original drawings in each book, all by the author, and four 
striking halftones. 

1. From New York to the Golden Gate, takes in many of the prin- 
cipal points between New York and California, and contains a highly 
entertaining narrative of the boys’ experiences overland and not a little 
useful information. 

2. From San Francisco to Japan, relates the experiences of the two 
boys at the Panama Exposition, and subsequently their joumeyings to 
Hawaii, Samoa and Japan. The greater portion of their time is spent 
at sea, and a large amount of interesting information appears throughout 
the text. 

3. From Tokio to Bombay. This book covers their interesting 
experiences in Japan, followed by sea voyages to the Philippines, Hong- 
kong and finally to India. Their experiences with the natives cover a 
field seldom touched upon in juvenile publications, as it relates to the 
great Hyderabad region of South India. 

4. From India to the War Zone, describes their trip toward the 
Persian Gulf. They go by way of the River Euphrates and pass the 
supposed site of the Garden of Eden, and manage to connect themselves 
with a caravan through the Great Syrian Desert. After traversing 
the Holy Land, where they visit the Dead Sea, they arrive at the Med- 
iterranean port of Joppa, and their experiences thereafter within the war 
zone are fuUy described. 


THE NEW YORK BOOK COMPANY 

147 FOURTH AVENUE NEW YORK 


The Wonder Island Boys 

By ROGER T. FINLAY 

A new series of books, each complete in itself, relating 
the remarkable experiences of two boys and a man, 
who are cast upon an island in the South Seas with 
absolutely nothing but the clothing they wore. By the 
exercise of their ingenuity they succeed in fashioning 
clothing, tools and weapons and not only do they train 
nature’s forces to work for them but they subdue and 
finally civilize neighboring savage tribes. The books 
contain two thousand items of interest that every boy 
ought to know. 

THE WONDER ISLAND BOYS 
The Castaways 

THE WONDER ISLAND BOYS 
Exploring the Island 

THE WONDER ISLAND BOYS 
The Mysteries of the Caverns 

THE WONDER ISLAND BOYS 
The Tribesmen 

THE WONDER ISLAND BOYS 
The Capture and Pursuit 

THE WONDER ISLAND BOYS 
The Conquest of the Savages 

THE WONDER ISLAND BOYS 
Adventures on Strange Islands 

THE WONDER ISLAND BOYS 
Treasures of the Islands 


Large 12mo, cloth. Many illustrations. 

60 cents per voL, postpaid. 

PUBLISHED BY 

THE NEW YORK BOOK COMPANY 

147 Fourth Avenue New York 



t 













